Notice: All forms on this website are temporarily down for maintenance. You will not be able to complete a form to request information or a resource. We apologize for any inconvenience and will reactivate the forms as soon as possible.

The Fall of the House of Usher

The Fall of the House of Usher season 1

Credits

Cast

Network

Reviewer

Paul Asay

Jump to:

Episode Reviews

TV Series Review

It’s been a good run. But for Roderick Usher and his dysfunctional family, the clock has struck. Its hands point to midnight. The bells toll.

One by one, Roderick’s children died. Inexplicably. Horribly. The iron bells tolled over each one, bloodied and battered and torn asunder.

But they’re not quite gone. Not yet.

You see, they visit Roderick, bedecked in their veils of red, wrapped in their mottled skin, eyes burning still with undead rage. One stands behind them all, ready to claim a soul. And none of Roderick’s money and influence and power can stand against her iron bells. The throbbing of the bells, the sobbing of the bells; keeping time, time, time as he knells, knells, knells.

The Tell-Tale Part

Roderick and Madeline Usher weren’t always so rich and so powerful and, let’s be honest, so loathed. Their shared journey to the top of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals started quietly, inauspiciously. But in time, their drive for power—and the power of a little opioid pill called Ligodone—propelled them to unimagined heights. And Roderick carried his six children, by five different mothers, with him.

Only two were blessed with legitimacy. Eldest Frederick was presumed heir to the Fortunato throne and married a beautiful model. Their daughter, Lenore, is the apple of Roderick’s eye—the “best of the Ushers,” he insists. Frederick’s sister, Tamerlane, married a fitness influencer known as “Bill-T,” and the two engaged in elaborate roleplay with hired actresses to satisfy Tamerlane’s (ahem) unusual desires.

But because Roderick himself was an illegitimate child—rejected and kept away from his father by brick walls and iron gates—he insisted on treating his own illegitimate offspring as real members of the family. And they’ve each tried, in their own ways, to make Pappy proud.

Victorine LaFourcade worked, with her doctor and partner, Dr. Alessandra “Al” Ruiz, to create a lifesaving heart device. Alas, the work was slow, and the chimpanzees that they killed were harder and harder to hide. Still, Victorine was sure a breakthrough was around the corner … before she was broken instead.

Napoleon was a bisexual drug addict who would say he made video games—a cloak of legitimacy that half-sister Camille would beg to refute. “You don’t make video games,” she told him. “You give money to people who make video games.”

Camille, meanwhile, had a real job, as her family’s public relations professional. She was clever, conniving and demanded a lot from her assistants, whom she called “Tina” and “Toby.” (She demanded a lot, if you take my meaning.)

And then there was Prospero, the product of a short encounter between Roderick and a blackjack dealer. He was the youngest of the Ushers and hoped to use his daddy’s money to launch a line of upscale nightclubs. Their intended name? Prospero’s, of course.

But those children’s days were drowned out by those iron bells. Roderick knows his own time is coming, too, and neither his sister’s joyless stratagems nor his lawyer’s legal maneuverings will save him.

She is coming. And she will not be denied. But Roderick is determined to, at least, make a full confession before the bells toll for him. He means to tell all to his archenemy—longtime lawyer and investigator C. Auguste Dupin.

Pity the Poe Viewers

Showrunner Mike Flanagan has left a bloody handprint on the horror genre. After a handful of big-screen films, the filmmaker turned his attention to Netflix, crafting a series of chillers: The Haunting of Hill House; The Haunting of Bly Manor; Midnight Mass and The Midnight Club. In most cases, he’s taken already spooky American literature and twisted it—pushing and contorting it into something new, dark and (he hopes) terrifying.

“The Fall of the House of Usher” was originally written by America’s godfather of horror literature, Edgar Allan Poe. But Flanagan wasn’t content with just taking this single story of heightened senses and premature burial and tossing it into his Netflix blender. No, he plucks from Poe’s whole creepy career: names, themes, stories, even lines taken word-for-word from Poe’s poems. He takes the dark party from “The Masque of the Red Death” and turns it into a hedonistic rave. “Murders in the Rue Morgue” becomes a moralistic tale about the evils of animal testing. And so on.

Indeed, all the vignettes pieced together in this Netflix miniseries seem to have a whiff of sermonizing rectitude to them. Victims are each drawn to their particular doom by their own dark desires and lack of ethics.

But while these stories may each have a moral, they’re anything but moral stories.

Admittedly, Poe would’ve earned plenty a disapproving head shake from the Plugged In equivalents back in his day. His stories can be soaked in blood and coated in gore.

But Flanagan and Netflix turn up the grotesquery volume to, oh, about 27. People are torn apart by animals, burned alive by acid and die in so many other oh-so-wretched ways. And even if they seem to die too peacefully, why, they might just literally dig themselves out of their graves.

The sexual content we see here might be even worse. The Ushers seem to feel that traditional man-and-wife monogamy is beneath them, so we see all manner of couplings (and triplings and more) in play. LGBT content is a given. Full nudity is on tap, too.

And while Poe was known for using unnecessary four-syllable words, this rendition just goes for the four-letter variety—spilling more obscenities than blood. And that’s saying something.

Netflix’s Fall of the House of Usher is perhaps the product of our own fallen world—and one that, judging by this show, seems to fall a little more all the time. This Netflix miniseries has some storytelling merits. But for those looking to avoid copious amounts of blood, skin and foul language, take a tip from Poe’s Raven and simply say, “nevermore.”

Episode Reviews

Oct. 12, 2023—S1, Ep1: “A Midnight Dreary”

The story opens at the triple funeral of three of Roderick Usher’s children. But then Roderick sees a strange, but very familiar woman in the church balcony. And after he collapses as he leaves the church itself, Roderick decides to invite his nemesis, C.A. Dupin, to his childhood home. “I called you tonight to give you the only thing you’ve ever wanted,” Roderick tells Dupin. “My confession.”

From there, the story flashes back to both Roderick’s distant past (when he and his sister were raised by their deeply religious, deeply disturbed single mother) and the more recent past—the last time the entire Usher family was together. And that was at a trial that Dupin himself led. There, Dupin brought charges against Roderick and Madeline’s powerful drug company, Fortunato Pharmaceuticals. And Dupin alleges in court that an Usher has been leaking him information.

In the more present timeline, Madeline says that she will literally kill anyone who leaked the info. When she’s through with the informant, she thunders, “There won’t be enough of you left to sue. I’ll have to sue the bloody puddle of gore in the designer shoes.”

Speaking of which, someone is buried prematurely. The victim ultimately digs out of her grave and, covered in mud, strangles somebody else. We see a chimpanzee on an operating table and a beating heart within the animal’s bloody chest cavity. It’s suggested that a man and woman may have killed someone. Roderick collapses as his nose bleeds. We see pictures of Roderick’s deceased children in Dupin’s office, each with brief glimpses of newspaper clippings that suggest how they died. We’re told that opioids like the one that Fortunato brought to market have been the cause of thousands of deaths. We learn that Roderick’s father once said, “Children are never too tender to be whipped. They’re like beefsteaks: The more you beat them, the more tender they become.” We see a badly injured ankle.

At the funeral, we see stained glass windows with Jesus and hear the preacher offer a rather dark eulogy. And in the flashback to Roderick and Madeline’s childhood, we learn about their very religious mother as she sinks into a painful illness. “Pain and suffering are like the kiss of Jesus,” she tells them. “It just means you’ve come so close that He can kiss you.” (Roderick profanely quips that God kissed the “living f— out of my mother in the years that followed.”) She believes that her faith alone will heal her; and when Madeline suggests getting help from doctors and medicine, her mother snaps, “Where is your faith? Your body is a temple to God, and you’d pollute it?”

But the older woman also seems to conflate her children’s father—Mr. Longfellow, the married head of Fortunato back then—with God himself. She says that Longfellow is “just like God the Father is on high and loves us from far away.” We see a cross above the mother’s bed.

Napoleon Usher, one of Roderick’s children, is bisexual. We see him kiss another man, and he has an explicit sexual encounter with a woman as well. We see another of Roderick’s children, Victorine, with her female significant other. We hear that Dupin (a man) has a husband. Prospero tries to sell Roderick on his nightclub scheme, telling his father, “I’m selling hedonism, privilege. It’s a dark room with few rules, fewer consequences.” He makes a reference to oral sex. Other references are made to sexual anatomy.

Roderick pours out a glass of cognac—the bottle of which cost him 4 million euros. “A single pour probably cost twice your annual salary,” he tells Dupin. We see someone drunk. Victorine uses an illegal paralytic as part of her work. Prospero serves his father some high-shelf whiskey.

We hear more than 25 f-words, a half-dozen s-words and several other profanities (“a–,” “b–tard” and “p-ss”). God’s name is misused four times, twice with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused twice.

Oct. 12, 2023—S1, Ep2: “The Masque of the Red Death”

Roderick continues his narrative to Dupin. And when Roderick sees one of his dead children in the room, he explains that he’s suffering from vascular dementia—a disease that generally kills you in five years and includes, as one of its many side effects, hallucinations.

In the distant past, a young Roderick proposes the concept of Ligodone (the drug that would later fuel the Usher fortune) to his boss at Fortunato, alleging the drug has “no side effects” and is “non-addictive.” In the recent past, Prospero plots to go into the party business—charging $10,000 for a “membership fee,” another $5,000 at the door. The first party will take place at a deserted Fortunato factory. “Sex and drugs are the theme,” he tells his friends/lovers. “The orgy starts at midnight.”

Prospero’s piece of the story begins in his bedroom, where he’s lying down with several naked revelers. (Full-frontal male nudity is seen in the shadows.) Of his two primary friends/lovers, one is a woman, the other appears to be genetically male but who would identify as nonbinary (wearing makeup and women’s clothing). His expensive “orgy” is filled with revelers in various stages of undress (including full-frontal female nudity and several topless dancers), writhing about on the dance floor and engaged in what would seem to be foreplay. The locale is also equipped with bedrooms: In surveillance footage, Prospero and others watch some of his guests engaged in sex. Incidentally, he lured his brother’s wife to the party with false promises of a consequence-free night and total anonymity.

Prospero meets a strange woman in red, thong-style lingerie during the party. She tells Prospero that there’s still time to stop what’s coming. “Things like this—all things, in fact—have consequences,” she says. She alludes to Roderick’s encounter with Prospero’s mother. “You are consequence, Perry,” she tells him.

Camille (another of Roderick’s illegitimate children) prepares to have sex with both of her young assistants (one male, one female). The assistants strip down to their underwear, while Camille wears a brassiere that doesn’t quite cover one of her breasts. Tamerlane’s husband, Bill, engages in roleplay with a hired actress. The two have dinner as Tamerlane watches and appears to start masturbating. We hear a lot of references to sexual acts, bodily fluids and body parts. Someone calls Roderick’s new wife, Juno, a “child bride.” (She’s of age, but certainly much younger than Roderick.) We see a picture of a woman’s nipple as the wallpaper on someone’s phone. There’s a reference to necrophilia.

Prospero asks his half-brother, Napoleon, for Viagra and other drugs for his party. Prospero snorts what appears to be cocaine with his friends/lovers. Adrenaline is injected into a chimpanzee. We hear a great deal about the drug Ligodone. When it appears that there won’t be any water available to drink at Prospero’s party, he says it doesn’t matter: “Everybody’s drinking Dom anyway,” referring to champagne. We also hear that party drugs such as Ecstasy and MDMA are readily available. People drink heavily at the party. Others drink and smoke at dinner. Characters say nearly 65 f-words, five s-words and other profanities (“a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “god–n,” “d–n,” “h—” and “p-ss.”) Jesus’ name is abused four times.

[Spoiler warning] Prospero’s party would begin in earnest when the sprinklers would go off and “rain” would come down. But what came down wasn’t rain: It appeared to be acid. We see those mostly naked revelers have their skin crackle and burn, and the dance floor is soon a mass of the dead and dying—looking for all the world as if they’ve all started to melt. The mysterious woman places a skull mask on Prospero’s dying form after kissing him on the mouth. Later, Prospero’s charred, deformed visage haunts Roderick.

Oct. 12, 2023—S1, Ep3: “Murders in the RUE Morgue”

The Ushers “grieve” Prospero’s death—deemed by all to be a tragic accident—and Camille schemes with how to spin it to the family’s advantage. She plans to lie about whose party it was and to reveal that Prospero quietly and generously gave to several charities. It’s a lie, but she knows that it’ll increase public sympathy. She also plans to pick into her half-sister Victorine’s suspicious medical experiments. But her investigation takes a dark turn.

Camille is told several rumors about what goes on in Victorine’s facility: She obscures the fact that her chimpanzee subjects have died by cutting them up and carrying them out of the facility in a specially lined bag. We don’t see this allegation play out, but we do see several chimps—and one human—with gruesome scars on their chests.

We also learn the aftermath of Prospero’s ill-fated party: Seventy-eight people dead (“so far,” the family lawyer says). That lawyer, Arthur Pym, goes into the taped-off site, takes Prospero’s phone and finds a woman still alive. One survivor, Morelle Usher (the wife of eldest Usher son, Frederick) is wrapped in bandages that she frenetically tries to take off. (When she successfully unwraps her head, Morelle’s daughter, who looks on, screams.) The substance that caused all that destruction was apparently byproducts from Fortunato’s drug-making operations. Roderick admits to Dupin that he’d planned to store the gunk in tanks, then dispose of them secretly to avoid EPA fines.

Victorine and her female partner, Al, kiss. Camille begins to disrobe in preparation to have sex with her underlings, Toby and Tami. (They refuse, telling her they’re in love with each other. We see Camille in a black bra.) Tamerlane and her husband engage in another round of roleplay with an apparent actress (actually the same mysterious woman who appeared to Roderick in the church and to Prospero at his party). Tamerlane reaches between her legs as she watches a dinner scene, apparently preparing to masturbate.

In a monologue about what the Usher family does when it’s given lemons, he includes references to genetically designing lemons to look a bit more like breasts and getting a “Kardashian to suck a lemon in a leaked sex tape.” Someone looks at a pornographic magazine. (The cover features the bikini-clad chest of a woman.)

Napoleon and Camille eat edibles, and Napoleon snorts cocaine to counteract those edibles. When Camille tells Napoleon’s male partner that Napoleon wants to marry him, the partner says, “Did he mean it? Or is it just the edibles and the pot and the speed and the wine and the coke and the pills talking?” Napoleon also is throwing a party that evening, and he tells Camille that he’s aiming for a “total blackout.”

We hear about people losing loved ones to opioids. It’s alleged that 50,000 people have died using Fortunato painkillers. Roderick drinks his cognac.

One of Victorine’s test chimpanzees gets loose and kills a young woman. The body is found the next day, brutalized and disfigured, in a lab painted with blood and grime. The body of a black cat—stabbed to death, apparently—is discovered, and the apartment in which it was found is slick with blood. (Someone tries to cover up the act and tells the owner that the cat likely just walked off.) We hear that a hundred million animals are used each year in everything from medical research to cosmetic testing. “Human beings doing this to so many other species,” someone says.

We hear about people lying, cheating and manipulating various systems. The f-word is uttered at least 30 times, the s-word several more times and the c-word is used once. A bevy of other profanities are spoken as well.

The Plugged In Show logo
Elevate family time with our parent-friendly entertainment reviews! The Plugged In Podcast has in-depth conversations on the latest movies, video games, social media and more.

paul-asay
Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

Latest Reviews

Animation

The Legend of Vox Machina

When it comes to being suitable for families, Amazon Prime’s The Legend of Vox Machina failed its saving throw.

Comedy

Agatha All Along

Occult themes aren’t the only elements viewers must be mindful of in Disney+ & Marvel’s ‘Agatha All Along.’

Drama

Doctor Odyssey

Doctor Odyssey stars a medical team working on a cruise ship, but it cares far more for romance than it does for its patients.

Want to stay Plugged In?

Our weekly newsletter will keep you in the loop on the biggest things happening in entertainment and technology. Sign up today, and we’ll send you a chapter from the new Plugged In book, Becoming a Screen-Savvy Family, that focuses on how to implement a “screentime reset” in your family!