The Haunting Of Bly Manor Mini Series (2020) Review

So with it being October, we have the obligatory Horror TV shows and films and this is the biggest one so far this year, the second in The Haunting Hill Collection - The Haunting Of Bly Manor and here is my review for it. The premise of the show sees when a nannie dies, she is replaced by an American girl who has to go to The English Manor in Bly, where she comes across interesting people and possibly more spiritual things amongst the house. 

Main Character

Victoria Pedretti who played a role in the first Haunting Hill show plays Dani the lead here and honestly I felt like she was the worst part of the show, it is fair to say that for a show to succeed you have to care about the main character and I never did. She was just so bland and I don't know what it was about her performance but I just thought she was really boring and I found it hard to ever really care about her and I felt like the show never really gave the audience a reason too. Also another issue that the majority of the supporting cast are great and it makes her stand out more. 

Supporting Characters

As I said above the supporting cast are really good, first onto the two creepiest kids on television. The young girl who voices Peppa Pig which is really creepy in itself is particularly great but these kids are a real highlight of the show and add so much to it. T'Nia Miller & Rahul Kohli are great in there roles as the housekeeper and chef respectively, they add a lot to the show and they are the most likeable and probably some of the more interesting characters here. To be honest the rest of the cast are pretty good too, even though I think the show tries to focus on a few too many characters but that doesn't hurt the pretty strong supporting characters. 

Story 

The story is interesting and build the suspense well, you are curious as to what is going on and what is wrong with this place. Some of the characters have interesting backstories and characters with decent arcs to them, but this show suffers from having to show pretty much every characters backstories. It feels like at least half of this show is just flashbacks, heck there is at least one whole episode of flashbacks which was unnecessary and could have been done in a cleverer way. Also I wasn't a huge fan of the final episode of the show, it just seemed to drag and it felt quite different to the other 8 episodes of the show. 

Script 

The script is okay, there is some decent dramatic scenes and some well written characters and the tension is built pretty well. But this show is a bit too convoluted at times, you are kind of trying to piece things together and then they throw something else at you not giving you time to take in the last big thing. Also I thought the use of the narrator here didn't really make much sense, even though it does have a good payoff at the end. 

Style 

This show does a good job of building tension and being pretty creepy. The score and atmosphere do a great job in emphasising that and really making you feel that you are trapped in this manor with these people. Though like most shows there are too many episodes here, maybe if they didn't have to spend so long on everybody's backstories there could have been like 6 episodes and it would have flowed better. Also for a show that is meant to be scary, I was rarely scared, though thank god there is hardly any jump scares so that is a good thing. 

Overall 

Overall, this is another average show, what is it with this year and shows that have promise but ultimately fail. It has some creeps but falls flat but go and watch The Haunting of Hill House as I have heard it is much better then this show. 

Rating - 5/10