Being a part of a family—whether it’s found or blood—is always a balancing act, as there’s so many different personalities thrown into a single space and it’s hard to keep them all pleased.
However, Mike Flanagan’s newest spooky miniseries The Fall of the House of Usher ramps the familial disagreements up to eleven as the show follows the demise a pharmaceutical dynasty that uses its billions of dollars to fund the endeavors of the six Usher children: Frederick, Tamerlane, Victorine, Camille, Napoleon, and Prospero.
While not much is known about the overall plot of the series—except that it’s based on an Edgar Allan Poe story of the same name, Netflix recently releases a small snippet from episode 1 along with the synopsis: “The CEO of a corrupt pharmaceutical company faces his questionable past when his children start dying in mysterious and brutal ways.”
In the clip, fans can see the Usher children, along with their father Roderick, aunt Madeline, the family attorney Arthur Pym, and their incredibly young stepmother Juno, sitting around the dinner table discussing a phenomenon of the super rich known as NDAs (non-disclosure agreements). The family is in the midst of a crisis as it has been revealed in court that there’s a mole within their ranks who is talking to the FBI about the crimes the family business has indulged in.
Along with Madelin and Arthur trying to get the kids and their spouses to sign the NDAs, you can get a glimpse at how detached the six siblings are from one another. Between the hurtful (and hilarious) insults and the accusations about one of them being the mole, the Usher family truly has no love for one another, and it’s so delicious to watch.
In our post-Succession world, audiences are in the market for a show that shows how nasty families get, especially when a lot of money is involved, and The Fall of the House of Usher seems to be ready to fill in that gap, albeit a whole lot spookier.
Without giving any spoilers away, the mini series focuses a lot on the themes of family, betrayal, revenge, and doing the right thing. The idea of coming from a family built on blood money isn’t new, but Flanagan found a way to make the concept original, out-of-the-box, and so freakin’ scary.
(feature image: Netflix)
