The new horror series “The Fall of the House of Usher” is available on Netflix. And it is full of references that fans of the fantasy and horror genre will be able to have fun finding.
Horror fans are served. The Fall of the House of Usher, new series from Mike Flanagan, was released on Netflix this Thursday, October 12. The creator of “The Haunting of Hill House”, “Bly Manor” and “Midnight Sermons” is now tackling the opioid crisis in his new program.
In The Fall of the House of Usher, Roderick and Madeline Usher are at the head of a powerful pharmaceutical empire, held responsible, by a determined lawyer, for the deaths of thousands of people.
While a criminal investigation is underway and one of their own is believed to have betrayed them, each of Roderick Usher’s children all die, one by one, in circumstances as tragic as they are mysterious. A woman from Roderick and Madeline’s past would indeed be involved.
The Fall of the House of Usher is full of winks and references that will delight fans of the horror and fantasy genre. But have you spotted them?
The Fall of the House of Usher is a tribute to the work of Edgar Allan Poe, a prolific writer who distinguished himself in the fantasy and horror genre in the 19th century. The title of the series is thus a direct reference to one of his short stories published in 1839. Its plot is readapted both in the first episode, but also as the plot of the series until the conclusion: the narrator accepts the Roderick Usher’s invitation to stay in his house. The latter then tells him about the “illness of his family”. We won’t tell you more so as not to spoil the plot and the ending.
Throughout the series, Mike Flanagan pays homage to Poe. Each of the episode titles is a reference to one of his writings, and reveals, for connoisseurs of the work, the way in which each of the characters is brought to perish. The character names are also taken directly from the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. If you like The Fall of the House of Usher, don’t hesitate to delve into the work of this British author hailed for his style and considered a precursor of detective novels and fantasy.
The Fall of the House of Usher is also a direct criticism of the opioid crisis in the United States. Since the mid-2010s, there have been numerous deaths believed to be attributed to overdoses and deaths linked to the use of opioids, nearly half of which, in 2016, were prescribed.
The Ushers are thus a mirror held up to the Sacker family, founders of the pharmaceutical laboratories Purdue Pharma and Mundipharma. They are considered responsible for the deaths of more than 500,000 people since 1999, particularly in the opioid crisis.
The New Yorker wrote that they were the first company to “persuade the American medical establishment that strong opioids should be much more widely prescribed”, despite doctors’ fears about their addictive nature.
