Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’: Netflix vs. the Original

The new season of Mike Flanagan’s Haunting series is an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe. While the two previous seasons (The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor) have taken a singular text as their inspiration, The Fall of the House of Usher is based on multiple Poe texts, making it an anthology within an anthology.

The story from which the season gets its name, though, is very different from the Netflix version. Aside from it being set in the present, key aspects of the story are also altered — aspects that made The Fall the instant classic that it was.

Harry Melling as Edgar Allan Poe (from The Pale Blue Eye)

In the original, for instance, a great deal of attention is paid to the actual House of Usher. As the narrator explains, the house (as in the lineage of Usher) and the dwelling are inextricably tied. Roderick Usher, the heir, even claims that his debilitation is due to his equally dilapidated estate:

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence…