She’s coming for them all. Who are they? Only the über-rich Usher family. On Tuesday, Netflix blessed us with the official trailer for Mike Flanagan‘s adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe‘s short story, The Fall of the House of Usher. It’s a spine-tingling, chilling affair, giving us a bloody taste of what we can expect when the eight-episode miniseries drops on the streamer. 

Here’s a synopsis: 

“From Mike Flanagan, the creator of The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, a wicked horror series based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Ruthless siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher have built Fortunato Pharmaceuticals into an empire of wealth, privilege and power. But past secrets come to light when the heirs to the Usher dynasty start dying at the hands of a mysterious woman from their youth.”

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The “mysterious woman” in the trailer is Carla Gugino, who plays Verna. Meanwhile, Bruce Greenwood portrays Roderick Usher, and Mary McDonnell is Madeline Usher, who will undoubtedly be a formidable foil for Verna. The trailer showcases its fair share of macabre moments and bloody beats, with a few nods to Poe’s other works. The multicolored rooms feel like a reference to the short story The Masque of the Red Death. For example, we see a room bathed in red light (even though this appears in The Fall of the House of Usher short story). 

There are also green, blue, dull yellow and white spaces. In The Masque of the Red Death, green symbolizes adolescence, blue stands for birth, white represents old age and dull yellow (orange in the text but it looks more yellowish here) symbolizes adulthood. There are also splashes of purple and black, representing “imminent death” and “death itself,” respectively. Additionally, the trailer references Poe’s seminal poem, The Raven, as the cast chants “Nevermore!” incessantly.  

The Fall of the House of Usher stars Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, Mary McDonnell, Rahul Kohli, Kate Siegel, Samantha Sloyan, Willa Fitzgerald, Zach Gilford and Ruth Codd. 

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The series also stars a few performers whose characters pay homage to other Poe works/real-life people. We have T’Nia Miller (whose Victorine LaFourcade is a reference to the short story The Premature Burial), Katie Parker (who plays Annabel Lee, a nod to Poe’s poem of the same name) and Carl Lumbly (who portrays C. Auguste Dupin, Poe’s detective character appearing in multiple works such as The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt and The Purloined Letter).

But that’s not all. Other actors whose names nod to Poe’s writing include Kyliegh Curran (who plays Lenore, referring to Poe’s poem of the same name), Robert Longstreet (who portrays Mr. Longfellow, a nod to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was embroiled in a plagiarism controversy with Poe) and Michael Trucco (he plays Rufus Wilmot Griswold, an editor who had a complex relationship with Poe). Lastly, there’s the legendary Mark Hamill (whose Arthur Pym references Poe’s only complete novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket). 

Check out the trailer below, and brace yourself for all the horror when the series premieres on Thursday, October 12, 2023, only on Netflix. 

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Melody McCune
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