1. There are some heavy and spooky easter eggs.
For those who do not know, an easter egg is an unexpected or undocumented feature in a piece of film or program, included as a joke or a bonus. The Netflix series has a bunch of easter eggs, but depending on who you talk to, they're not a joke or a bonus. In almost every episode, there are scenes where the camera shifts away from the cast to the background behind them. The camera is still focused on the face of the characters but you can faintly see the silhouette of a different person in the dark room.
When the show first came out, I thought my eyes were messing with me, so I tried to ignore the background to calm my nerves. I finally understood these figures were put there for a reason when my heart stopped as a silhouette simultaneously moved out from under the shadow and showed itself in the moonlight.
For anyone who is terrified of the dark, this is a warning, but for those hungry for a horror flick, this one is pretty good with putting unsettling details here and there to keep you watching very closely.
2. Netflix didn't mess up with casting.
One tiny thing you can definitely appreciate about this show is how they cast the roles. The series holds a ton of flashback narratives, and it's satisfying to see that the younger versions of the characters look a lot like their adult selves.
I applaud the child actors for capturing their roles spot on and being able to sleep after shooting scenes like this.
3. The character development is goals.
There are seven main figures in this series, and the director doesn't hold back with creating a very deep and scarring backstory for each of them. As much as I'd love to tell you their stories, it'll ruin your experience with the series. It makes for a very intimate viewing-experience—you'll learn new things about the characters every episode and find yourself loving them at some points and then hating them the next episode. Your feelings for these characters can be summarized as seven replicas of Zuko from "Avatar The Last Airbender" in a horror flick—he was the man-boy you hated in the beginning but fell in love in the end after he helped save the universe.
Their backstory plays a huge part in the plot, so it gets you deeply invested into finishing it just so you can make sure your new fictional family survives in the end.
4. The plot is too addicting.
Every backstory plays a huge part in the plot because you're never given an answer as to how it all started. With the characters' childhood flashbacks and their present selves, you can start to mold theories on how the characters will save themselves (or get themselves killed) from the infested house as the ominous presence in the series makes itself tangible to the mortal world. With spirits walking during the day and trapping characters in their nightmares, you're forced to be aware of the things in the background before you find them behind someone. And you develop this weird lust to see how things will be revealed.
As the plot thickens with the evil presence growing, you also learn to appreciate the little imperfections of characters and how they affected the storyline. The love for these characters can get a person deeply invested into finishing it just to make sure their newly fictional family survives in the end. Keep a tissue box nearby.
5. It's all kinds of horror.
There was this girl who screamed on the bus during our trip back to Champaign-Urbana after a field trip. She scared the pants off my TAs and the bus driver. When we asked her what she was screaming about, she explained that was watching "The Haunting of Hill House" on her phone with headphones. All of my classmates settled back on our chairs without asking any more questions.
This show will scare the crap out of you. I don't care if you say you're a "hard-ass" or "nothing ever scares me." This series will make you jump.
There are things that are gory with the foam of the mouth and blood coming out of wounds. There are details within the show that'll make you uncomfortable and sad with visions influenced by the infested house and the mother. There are things that'll be horrifyingly thrilling as ghosts embody themselves into with realistic scenarios. No matter what kind of horror you're into, the series fulfills all descriptions and it is not overdone or cheesy.
Whether you loved the series or hated it, you managed to pull through and watch it to the end. And if not, you've read five reasons why you should watch at least one episode and then decide from there.
