‘Bent-Neck Lady’ episode made ‘Haunting of Hill House’ director cry

Netflix

Warning: This post contains spoilers for “The
Haunting of Hill House.”

• “The Haunting of Hill House” director Mike Flanagan told
  TheWrap that the fifth episode, “The Bent-Neck Lady,” made him
  cry when he thought of the idea.
• “In a lot of ways, that episode was why I wanted to
  make this show,” he said.
• “It completely changes everything that came before it,”
  he added.

There are plenty of emotional moments in Netflix’s hit horror
series, “The Haunting of Hill House,” but one of the biggest made
even the show’s director cry.

Episode five, “The Bent-Neck Lady,” focuses on Nell’s (Victoria
Pedretti) storyline, and reveals that the ghost that haunted her
as a child was actually her own after she dies as an adult.
Director Mike Flanagan told TheWrap that when the idea for
“The Bent-Neck Lady” occurred to him, he started crying.

“In a lot of ways, that episode was why I wanted to make
this show,” he added.

Flanagan also explained how the episode was the “heart of
the show,” and that’s why it was placed in the middle of the
season.

“It completely changes everything that came before it,” he
said. “We make a lot of assumptions about the show and about the
ghosts and come from a place of jaded familiarity with the
haunted house genre, so this turns that on its head … but more
than anything, it’s about what it does to a character that we
cannot help but to deeply empathize with. It really was the
reason I wanted to make this show, and it slides right into my
other favorite episode of the series, which is Episode 6 [“Two
Storms”]. Those two episodes together represent the pinnacle of
this story for me.”

Episode six brings the Crain family together at Nell’s
funeral, and features multiple long takes in the present and the
past, when the family lived in the haunted Hill house.

For an explanation of how Flanagan pulled the episode off,
click here.