 Hey guys it's Liana and I'm here today to rant about the haunting of Hill House. You've never heard of the haunting of Hill House? It's a classic horror novel and I think pretty sure it's a horror novel. Not a thriller. Well regardless it's considered a classic of its genre, whatever that genre is. And Netflix did recently adapt to this. I haven't seen the Netflix show from what I gather. The Netflix show follows totally different characters and a totally different time period and is very loosely based on this so I don't know. Maybe I'll watch it because maybe I'll like it better than this if it's nothing like this. I was led to believe that well for one it would be great because it's a classic, but also that it's very very creepy and dark and chilling and scary. And I don't really read horror so I was fully prepared to be like extra scared because it's not something I generally read so my tolerance would be in theory even lower. I mean I read grimdark but that's not the same thing. So I expected to be thoroughly creeped out and blown away by its amazingness and its scariness and neither happened. And I will be non-spoiler briefly now and that was kind of it aka it sucks. So most of this video will have spoilers in it because my reasons for disliking it are pretty spoilery. But non-spoiler section reasons is again that it's not scary and that it doesn't really ever... I guess that's kind of spoilery. I mean basically like it doesn't really explain anything and I hate that. I felt really unsatisfied and not remotely impressed and not remotely scared reading this. A lot of people love it. It is a classic so maybe don't take my word for it. But if you like me picked it up and were like this is going to be amazing because it's considered amazing and you did not feel that it was and you would like to commiserate well then stay tuned because we about to get into spoilers. Now I did give this book three stars the main reason being it did a few things well. That being the prose is pretty good. It's pretty atmospherically told. I could picture everything very well. It was told in a way that was very readable. I had a sense for again who everyone kind of was. Not exactly and I'll get into that in a second because that is part of my problem with it but like overall like it was executed in a like I don't I feel like part of the craft is telling the story in a way that makes it good but I just mean like the the sentences are well constructed and like it's told in a logical order. I don't like it seems like that side of things is fine. And then if this book had not been a horror novel if this never purported to be a horror novel and we took out some of the supernatural elements and we just made this a story about some people who are staying at this house and one of them is losing their mind and that's what this is about that would I think this book would actually be really good if that's what it was about but that's now what it's about and for that reason it's terrible. What do I mean by that? So again this is the spoiler section so I'm kind of going to assume you may have read this so I apologize if I'm not super clear on things but so basically this this man who is interested in studying the supernatural he has a degree in anthropology because he thinks that a degree in anthropology will lend him credulity in these studies and on the surface of that at first I was like anthropology I was like wait a minute what do you mean a degree in anthropology means you can now study haunted houses you're making anthropologists look stupid anyway so I went from being like excited to like super not excited that that's his background and he's interested in hill house which is known for being haunted and he invites to go to the house two young women who um are like somehow connected to the supernatural um and and that's like so thin his reasons for that it's just like so bizarre and then he's required to have with him the air who's supposed to inherit hill house just because like they won't rent him the house without him being there so he's there because and then later on the main guy the professor like the doctor of anthropology his wife shows up and brings a friend so that's our group of people staying at the house and the he the main guy he writes to these young women and invites them to come to the house and like just that on its own is the reason I hate this book because the way he singled them out was basically that like he had he had been in the papers it was kind of somehow generally known that one of them was known for being kind of a mind reader and the other one had experienced something supernatural I think it was something telekinetic something like that I don't know it was strange and for that reason alone he wrote to them and he'll ask them to come to the house and they accepted so him asking them it was weird um and then them accepting is unlikely and weird now that they don't meet him before they go to the house they just pack up and show up at the house where they meet him for the first time and like why I would never in the history ever do anything like that at least not without like meeting first and being like you wrote to me and said you'd like me to go with you to this house and then go together like not actually go all the way to the fucking house like it's just as a premise I'm like who would do this and who would expect that to work like why would he think they would go for that if I was him I would offer to meet these people and interview them first I would want to because I'm going to be spending time with them in a house like overnight like you'd more to vet them more than just like I heard they experienced something supernatural but whatever so they all go to this house and the housekeeper is really strange all the towns people nearby are really strange and they all are like nothing good ever happens here and you want to stick around here and everything is bad here and they're like something bad so it's all very ominous and that's like well done in the sense of it gets poorly done because none of it's later explained but it's well done in the in the way that it makes you feel slowly more and more like worried that like oh shit oh shit what are they gonna find in this house so the main character if there is one isn't actually the guy assembling these people it's the girl who like experienced something that I again I think was telekinetic it was something to do with something something unexplained I forget and I don't care I read this yesterday I don't I don't remember and I don't care um her name is Eleanor and her mother died recently and like her whole life was pretty much occupied by taking care of her ailing mother and now that mother is dead she's kind of finally free but she's never actually established a life for herself she doesn't have friends she doesn't have interests her whole life was taking care of her sick mother so she's kind of an awkward introvert and her being with these people in this house for the first time is like her first outing ever and so she like her relationship with everything that's going on is a little like strange because she's a little strange and again if the book had been just about that about a young woman who's been so sheltered and so hidden from society that this encounter kind of breaks her just just being in this remote house that with these people like that makes her lose her mind and that was what this book was about just that I think this would be really a really great book but it's actually like a supernatural type of book where there are actual ghosts haunting hill house and the housekeeper keeps saying things that are very strange and you keep I kept thinking that some of it would be explained in the I mean a ghost story would always leave something unexplained that's what makes it creepy at the end and I'm fine with that but nothing really is ever explained like there is this backstory given to sort of the tragic history of the house i.e. the sisters that owned it and fought over it and then how the one sister ended up living there with a companion and then left the house with the companion but then the sister who was alive fought the companion for rights to the house and then the companion like killed herself because she was stressed over it and like basically that's like the story of the house that ever since then people keep like dying near the house anyone who's tried to own it people whenever they've been in the house they leave immediately and they never say why but it's clear like people just like flee the house so you keep thinking like you'll find out kind of more why that is and the housekeeper keeps saying very not just bizarre things but very specifically bizarre i.e. that like I have agreed to do this and I have to do this at this time like they question her on it or like well can you wait or can you do it later and she's like I have to do this at this time this goes here I do this at this time like it has to be that way and you get this sense that the house requires that or the ghosts require that or there's something to the specificity of that so I kept waiting to find out some part of that but we don't ever find anything else she's just weird I guess and then the hauntings themselves are fairly eerie but like not very eerie there's like some knocking on doors some writing on the walls that's unexplained what's frankly the most creepy is the personalities of these people and how they turn on each other so again if this book was more like Lord of the Flies in that it's about the people it's about like if it was just the framing device was that some man decided to investigate this old house because he heard it was haunted and then he invites some other people and we need a better explanation for who is inviting and why but that aside invites some people to this house and that just by being in such an isolated creepy place that they all kind of starts wearing them all down and they all kind of start turning on each other and they kind of start maybe doing weird things that people don't normally do in normal circumstances that's what it was about I'd be like super into it and the way it's written it almost feels like it wants to be telling a story like that where it's more about the people but we're still shoehorning in the hauntings and then not explaining the hauntings so like by the end Eleanor like full on loses her mind because she thinks like the house belongs to her and she belongs to the house she's like laughing maniacally about how she cannot leave it and it's part of her and she's part of it and that she can like hear and sense every part of the house even the part she's not in which doesn't seem I mean it's crazy but it seems crazy in the way of like an actual haunting because she can sense who's in every room which you know a crazy person can't magically do that so that's not not just being crazy and then when she leaves she like crashes her own car and we're meant to be unnerved by the fact that at the very last second she's like wait why am I doing this which again makes it seem more like a haunting than like a crazy person but it's a haunting so again if this book was basically that just like being in isolation in close quarters with some people with some strange ideas and especially this like one introverted girl who's never ever been around people before that this is too much for her mind to deal with and it breaks her and she ends up killing herself I'll probably give this five stars because some of the characterization some of the sort of the specificity of how these people are kind of melting down and how they're kind of starting to snipe at each other and how they don't like how they can seem kind in one minute and rude the next there's a lot of elements to it that seem really well done but it's the haunting factor that ruins it because if you're going to do this haunted ghost story then I need that to be fleshed out more the whole story seems to be focusing on these character dynamics and then it remembers all of a sudden that oh yeah this is a haunted house story and then we need to have some haunting type things going on so there's maniacal laughter that's unexplained door slamming is unexplained but the thing that's creepy is the way these people's psyches are melting down so it's at the end there's kind of some offhand comments that almost kind of want to suggest that maybe this was all in Eleanor's head because there's something about how because there was previously like blood writing on the wall and blood smeared on Theodora's clothes so Theodora has been wearing Eleanor's clothes since then which is an external thing that they've all agreed is happening but now as Eleanor's leaving she's like I can't leave what are you gonna wear she's like I don't need your clothes I don't need them like it's fine and I guess we're meant to take from that that maybe Eleanor was imagining that Theodora was borrowing her clothes but that doesn't like that's not enough of a oh shit it was in her head the whole time kind of thing it seems more like they're probably just saying it's fine I'll just wear someone else's clothes so if that's what it's meant to be that actually this was all in her head this whole time the way everything else has happened it's not told in a way where you could be like oh man on retrospect like actually that's totally like it might have just been in her head no it's told in a way where like it really has to have been actually happening with everyone else too it really doesn't come across as like oh it totally could have been in her no it's definitely hauntings and at the end of the book too it says something about how the house is evil and the house is haunted so I don't know what I'm meant to get out of this is it a haunted house story where it's just like a haunted house and these ghosts are doing things to people making them crazy or is it really about the psyches of these people and how like one of them just like loses it and kills herself because she's crazy it wasn't really either one enough to be good and that's what was so frustrating about it and then I mean this it takes place in like the 50s or 60s so there's some like really unfortunate kind of characterization of like the delicate frail females and like the men who were the sensible rational ones and then the the professor's wife being so annoying and obnoxious and insistent and like I really wanted her to die I was like kind of ghost please kill her it wasn't the hauntings weren't creepy because it the book didn't really seem to be concerned that much with the hauntings and at the beginning when it's like this whole idea of the doctor kind of debunking things but also that was unclear too it seemed like he was a believer and that his this whole degree in anthropology was just to like make it seem legit but he's really a believer but he's also like done the work of researching everything and looked into how the house is constructed in a way that will mess with your head that it's not necessarily a ghost it's just that everything is kind of like off kilter which would explain why doors slam because like they're you know everything's at an angle which would make doors slam that it's all kind of built circuitously and in a confusing way kind of like the Winchester mystery house he even references the Winchester mystery house and I'm saying that it's just built in a way that it's gonna like mess with your mind so it's building in all this doubt about how your things play tricks on your eyes and like that's not real and then the fact that the main character Eleanor is kind of like a little nuts you're like okay so maybe some of this is imagined but a lot of it really couldn't just be imagined so I don't know what it's trying to do I don't know if it's trying to creep me out as like a this is really a truly haunted house and there are dark mystical occult forces at work or the real ghost here the real monster here is the human psyche because it didn't really do either thing it tried to do both a little bit and I guess it's like a choose your own adventure but you kind of have to pick a lane dude you have to really lean in to either this is a haunted house make it truly truly haunted and then I need more explanations for these little clues you left because there isn't an actually an explanation for the hauntings so like there's we get this the whole the sisters fighting over the house and the companion killing herself but the hauntings are like the laughter of a child and there's nothing about like a child having tragically died in the house that's not part of the history so that's never explained it's just like a well well children laughing in the night is inherently creepy so the haunting will just be inherently creepy but it doesn't work like you need to actually explain something about like what the heck is going on and all these things all these things that the housekeeper was saying about how I have to do this at a certain time and I have to be here before like I have to leave before it's dark and I have to do this this and this at this time and this is how it has to be you need to explain that you can't just do that it's why is that there otherwise it's just like it doesn't know what it wants to be I don't know how many other way to say it and the characters themselves are less interesting for the fact that a lot of what would be interesting about it is explained as a haunting you can't have the twist be that it's actually haunted but the twist also possibly be that it maybe wasn't haunted that it was just in her head it's both and neither and it's barely really frustrating and for that reason it's bad so like yeah I guess when I was thinking when I was reading it I was like if this was like the woman in black which I found to be genuinely creepy and chilling and it is very similar in the sense of it's this I mean he's by himself but he's somebody going to a house and the house is the site of a haunting and he learns more and more about the history of the house and the history of this like woman in black who's haunting it and why she would be like haunting it and the way in which she's haunting it aligns with her story and his experience of this like ghostly apparition aligns with her story and it makes sense in his own supernatural way which makes it really satisfying because it's still the fact that the supernatural can never truly be explained because you're like why is this phenomenon exist at all because ghosts are like are they real but the way the ghost is operating if you accept that it's real makes its own kind of sense whereas in the haunting of the house you get the kind of creepy backstory of the house but the creepy backstory of the house has almost nothing to do with the way that it's being haunted like none of the hauntings are explained by that backstory so pick it over backstory then I guess if these if you want the hauntings to be like this or then you could have again uh lord of the flies weathering heights type of situation where nothing supernatural it's just that the stories about how crazy people can get in given the right circumstances so this book could have been fantastic if it picked one of those things but it it seemed like it couldn't decide what it wanted to be and was just like it'll be kind of both and you guys will decide and it'll be brilliant because I didn't do either one apparently that worked a lot of people think it's classic I did not find it scary I did not find it creepy I did not find it earth shattering or groundbreaking or really anything I found it a bit tedious frankly and I was worried picking it up because I was house sitting in a house where I was by myself and cat sitting so there would be like the noises of cats in the middle of the night and I was worried if I read this by myself at night that the rest of the night I'd be like scared shitless um but that did not happen I was really disappointed by how not scared I was so yeah let me know in the comments down below if you've read The Haunting of Hill House how you felt about it if you did read it I assume that you know something about it if you made it this far in the video or you don't plan to read it and again a lot of people love it and I kind of genuinely would like someone to explain to me what makes this so great I looked up some reviews for that very reason as soon as I finished it I was like can someone shed a light on why this is considered amazing so I genuinely did look up some like reviews to try to see like what people were praising about it and you tended to be vague things like oh it's just truly like terrifying and truly and well executed and truly bone-chilling and I was like how in what day or again vague praises like this defined the genre and it's a classic for a reason and I'm like what reason please tell me the reason because I I don't see it I don't get it let me know in the comments down below how you felt about that book and feel about books like it if you've read The Woman in Black if you liked that better because I did if you have books to recommend to me because you were disappointed with this one and you found one that was better that was like it then let me know I post videos on Saturdays so like and subscribe and I'll see you next Saturday bye