A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poes The Fall of the House of Usher

Table Of Content

• The Tell-Tale Heart
• In film and television
• The Fall of the House of Usher Cast & Characters in Mike Flanagan Series - Netflix Tudum
• The Fall of the House of Usher review – a gleefully terrifying take on Edgar Allan Poe
• Gather 'round for a music-rich storytelling with 'Circle Round'
• Breaking Down the Brutal Ending of The Fall of the House of Usher

The film was the first of eight Corman/Poe feature films and stars Vincent Price, Myrna Fahey, Mark Damon and Harry Ellerbe. Several days later, Roderick tells the narrator that Madeline has died, and they lay her to rest in a vault. In the days that follow, the narrator starts to feel more uneasy in the house, and attributes his nervousness to the gloomy furniture in the room where he sleeps. The narrator begins to suspect that Roderick is harbouring some dark secret.

The Tell-Tale Heart

Roderick and Madeline are twins and the two share an incommunicable connection that critics conclude may be either incestuous or metaphysical,[7] as two individuals in an extra-sensory relationship embodying a single entity. To that end, Roderick's deteriorating condition speeds his own torment and eventual death. The first two episodes of The Fall of the House of Usher premiered at Fantastic Fest in September 2023 before the Netflix release the following month, being viewed more than 13 million times in its first two weeks. It was met with positive reviews, with critics praising its production values, directing, and performances (in particular from Gugino, Greenwood and Mark Hamill), although they were divided on its narrative, notably in relation to the source materials. The storyline is inspired by Jackson's own journey as an usher for the widely acclaimed production. After the disastrous launch of her Goldbug company, Tamerlane (Samantha Sloyan) returns home to see visions of Verna (dressed as her doppelgänger) reflected back at her in every mirror of her house.

In film and television

As the series draws to a close, Verna—whose name is an anagram of the titular bird in Poe's classic 1845 poem "The Raven"—is shown placing an item on each of the Usher's graves that represents their respective downfalls, closing the loop of her karmic retribution. Decades later, once it became clear that Verna was the one killing off the Usher children, Madeline tried to sidestep the deal by convincing Roderick to kill himself. But Verna wasn't willing to let him get off that easy and brought him back to face the full extent of his reckoning, the death of his granddaughter Lenore (Kyliegh Curran), the only morally good Usher.

The Fall of the House of Usher Cast & Characters in Mike Flanagan Series - Netflix Tudum

She chases after Verna with a fire poker and smashes nearly all of the mirrors, ultimately hitting the mirrored ceiling above her bed as she cries about messing everything up. Shards fall down and stab her to the eternal sleep that Verna knows she desperately needs. Camille (Kate Siegel) couldn’t let her animosity toward her half-sister, Victorine LaFourcade (T’Nia Miller), rest, so she goes to Vic’s research facility to dig up more dirt on her unethical experiments. They’ll get the whole world — running Fortunato Pharmaceuticals, making more money than they could ever imagine, literally getting away with murder — all sans consequences. “When you’re done, at the end of it all… just before you would have died anyway, your bloodline dies with you,” Verna offers them. The two scrappy Ushers, who came into the world together, would leave the world together, atop a hill of riches, excess… and bodies.

The Fall of the House of Usher review – a gleefully terrifying take on Edgar Allan Poe

This time, Flanagan’s ghoulish crew is entering familial territory, as 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. English majors will likely know where some of the stories are going just by seeing the episode names.

Roderick’s first wife and only true love, Annabel Lee (Katie Parker), leaves him after he betrayed his sense of integrity and threw young investigator C. Auguste Dupin (Malcolm Goodwin) under the bus to get ahead at Fortunato. Auguste (portrayed in the present by Carl Lumbly) later tells Roderick that the only reason he trusted him back then was because he trusted the good-hearted Annabel Lee. Dominique Fishback plays Dre, a crazed fan of a famous R&B singer, in this FX's horror thriller series. Season 3 of the spin-off anthology series American Horror Stories releases on Oct. 26 on Hulu and FX.

Breaking Down the Brutal Ending of The Fall of the House of Usher

Every Edgar Allan Poe Reference In ‘Fall of the House of Usher' - TODAY

Every Edgar Allan Poe Reference In ‘Fall of the House of Usher'.

Posted: Wed, 25 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

To secure their fortune — and future — two ruthless siblings build a family dynasty that begins to crumble when their heirs mysteriously die, one by one. Poe was often dismissed by contemporary literary critics because of the unusual content and brevity of his stories. When his work was critically evaluated, it was condemned for its tendencies toward Romanticism. The writers and critics of Poe’s day rejected many of that movement’s core tenets, including its emphasis on the emotions and the experience of the sublime. Accordingly, commentaries on social injustice, morality, and utilitarianism proliferated in the mid-19th century. Poe conceived of his writing as a response to the literary conventions of this period.

In November 2023, Roderick Usher, the CEO of pharmaceutical company Fortunato Pharmaceuticals, loses all six of his children within two weeks. Auguste Dupin, an Assistant United States Attorney who dedicated his career to exposing Fortunato's corruption, to his childhood home, where he tells the true story of his family and unveils the Ushers' darkest secrets. Roderick and Madeline’s trauma begins when their devout mother, Eliza (Annabeth Gish), dies at home, and the twins bury her in a homemade coffin in the backyard. Eliza claws her way out and exacts vengeance on William Longfellow (Robert Longstreet) — her married boss, CEO of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals, and Madeline and Roderick’s neglectful father.

Cast and characters

It recounts both the rise to power of Roderick Usher, the powerful CEO of a corrupt pharmaceutical company and his sister Madeline Usher, the firm's genius COO, and the events leading to the deaths of all six of Roderick’s children. It stars an ensemble cast led by Carla Gugino as a mysterious woman plaguing the Ushers, Bruce Greenwood as an elderly Roderick and Mary McDonnell as an elderly Madeline. ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ is an 1839 short story by Edgar Allan Poe ( ), a pioneer of the short story and a writer who arguably unleashed the full psychological potential of the Gothic horror genre.

But then he starts experiencing disturbing and violent visions — attacks from the cat, dead animals — to the point where he uses Thor’s hammer (a gift from Chris Hemsworth, naturally) to tear his apartment apart looking for the cat. Thinking he sees the feline out on his balcony, he chases after it in a rage… and falls off the ledge to his death on the street below. This horror-comedy takes place when high school kids journey to find out what this entity around them is and try to find out how a teen named Harold Biddle died 30 years ago. The teens are in for an adventure and scary time while trying to solve this mystery. During a heated argument with Roderick, Madeline suddenly falls into catalepsy, a condition in which its sufferers appear dead. Roderick knows that she is still alive, but convinces Winthrop that she is dead and rushes to have her entombed in the family crypt beneath the house.

Roderick eventually declares that he has been hearing these sounds for days, and that they are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was entombed. Fearing that her body will be exhumed for medical study, Roderick insists that she be entombed for two weeks in the family tomb located in the house before being permanently buried. The narrator helps Roderick put Madeline's body in the tomb, whereupon the narrator realizes that Madeline and Roderick are twins. The narrator also notes that Madeline's body has rosy cheeks, which sometimes happens after death.