Lumbly played a large role in the television series Alias and can also be seen in more recent projects such as The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, This is Us, and S.W.A.T. The Fall of the House of Usher is a 2023 Gothic Horror crime drama miniseries developed by Mike Flanagan, based loosely off an array of major works by Edgar Allan Poe, including its namesake story. It stars Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, Mary McDonnell, Carl Lumbly, Samantha Sloyan, T'Nia Miller, Rahul Kohli, Kate Siegel, Sauriyan Sapkota, Zach Gilford, Willa Fitzgerald, Katie Parker, Malcolm Goodwin, Michael Trucco, Henry Thomas, and Mark Hamill. Though not premiering under The Haunting title, the series is a Spiritual Sequel to Flanagan's previous The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor. Contemporary readers and critics interpreted the story as a somewhat sensationalized account of Poe’s supposed madness. (As a recluse, Poe often invited such accusations.) Later scholarship pursued alternative interpretations.
Roderick's Lemon Monologue
Now, a mysterious woman (Gugino) begins to pick Roderick's dysfunctional heirs off one by one. That left only two Ushers—the ones who entered the world together, and had to go out as well. While Madeline tried to skirt the system by having Roderick overdose on his own Fortunato meds, Verna wasn't letting that happen. And so Roderick invited Madeline over to their childhood home, where their mother once died (and rose again, only to strangle a man to death before finally dying herself), to share a drink. This death comes as a major twist; throughout the conversation between Roderick and Dupin, he notes that he's not answering texts he's receiving from his granddaughter. As you may remember, Madeline's plan was to turn Fortunato into a tech company, and one of her major projects was A.I.
The Tell-Tale Heart
Kohli can previously be seen in a handful of Mike Flanagan’s previous projects, including The Haunting of Bly Manner, Midnight Mass, and Midnight Club. She is the daughter of both Roderick and Annabel Lee, his first wife. And I think she aspires so much to please her father and to make him proud. And that has distorted her ambition in a way that has caused her to lock out all other things from life. [There’s] a single-mindedness to her, and she’s put so much pressure on herself and so much importance on her success that her anxiety level has just gone through the roof."
Film Credits
Only, as evidenced by the noises coming from the basement, Madeline wasn't quite dead. Once Roderick and Madeline were the only ones left in the bar after a long night of drinking, Verna revealed to the twins that she knew what they had done. But, if they agreed to her terms, she could guarantee that they would not only get away with Rufus' murder but also rise to control Fortunato's billion-dollar painkiller empire and never be convicted of a single crime. By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.
'The Fall of the House of Usher': All the Edgar Allan Poe references - Entertainment Weekly News
'The Fall of the House of Usher': All the Edgar Allan Poe references.
Posted: Thu, 12 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
What deal did Verna make with Roderick and Madeline, and why did it result in the entire Usher family dying?
Outside, he looks back just in time to see the house split in two and collapse. One of the most interesting and perplexing threads of the finale comes with the way Arthur Pym's story wraps up. While Roderick clearly felt lots of remorse for the collateral damage that his successes had caused through the years—Verna explicitly showed him the deaths he was responsible for—Madeline felt absolutely none. She instead blamed "the consumers," the people whose lives are made worse by taking in the products that they (and others) make available. Not when he drugged Madeline's drink, just as she drugged Griswold's all those years earlier, and not when he cut her eyes out, mummifying her with the sapphires she so valued in her time on this earth.
What happened to Arthur Pym?
But now she only sees poverty in Roderick, as he starved their children of love. After she turns her back on him, we learn that she died by suicide. Through the years, the siblings convinced themselves that this simply couldn't have actually been real. They shared a traumatic event at a formative time in life, and had been drinking quite a bit—their meeting with Verna must have been a shared delusion, and for years, they wrote it off as such.
Episodes
Despite this admission, Usher remains in the mansion and composes art containing the Usher mansion or similar haunted mansions. His mental health deteriorates faster as he begins to hear Madeline's attempts to escape the underground vault she was buried in, and he eventually meets his death out of fear in a manner similar to the House of Usher's cracking and sinking. It is revealed that Roderick's sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, deathlike trances.
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.
Carla Gugino - Verna
By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies, and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands. 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.
Verna is the shape-shifting demon after the Usher family throughout the series. By doing this, Roderick was briefly arrested for perjury, but earned goodwill with both Griswold and the larger Fortunato community; he was willing to take one for the team. While eventually Roderick could have used this to simply move his way up, he and Madeline had other plans. The twin siblings showed up to Fortunato's New Year's Eve 1979 party, greeted by a grateful Griswold, dressed as a court jester. After much schmoozing, Griswold eventually started hitting on Madeline, before the two retreated down to a soundproof basement.
The Fall of the House of Usher: Limited Series - Rotten Tomatoes
The Fall of the House of Usher: Limited Series.
Posted: Sat, 12 Aug 2023 07:26:45 GMT [source]
As he watches, the House of Usher splits in two and the fragments sink away into the lake. 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. Each episode of the series focuses on a different scary story with a twist.
But the themes remain the same—guilt, obsession, vengeance, and a supernatural sense of justice. Roderick Usher’s children are getting what they deserve, not merely because they are the fruit of a very poisoned tree but because they have made horrific decisions to stay in the shelter of wealth and privilege. As Roderick finishes his story, an eyeless and bloodied Madeline suddenly bursts out of the basement and attacks Roderick as the house begins to crumble around them. In a final burst of strength, Madeline strangles Roderick to death as Auggie flees collapsing home—a sequence that mirrors the ending of Poe's "House of Usher." 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.
Consciousness, created from scanning people's social media posts and more. In a direct reference to Poe's most famous work (and how did we not see this coming with the name "LENORE"?!), A.I. Lenore only kept texting Roderick variations of, you guessed it, "Nevermore." After Leo (Rahul Kohli) wakes up from a bender with bloodstained hands to find his boyfriend Julius’ (Daniel Jun) cat stabbed to death in their living room, he knows he’s in trouble.
Poe’s contemporaries favoured a more realistic approach to writing. 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 “The Fall of the House of Usher,” he deliberately subverts convention by rejecting the typical practices of preaching or moralizing and instead focusing on affect and unity of atmosphere.
Instead of bringing comfort or release, Roderick uses artistic endeavors to wallow in his anxiety. Roderick Usher is the patriarch of the Usher family and the CEO of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals, which his twin sister, Madeline, helped to acquire. While he has plenty to offer his six children, generally, his fatherly affection isn’t included. The series is a modernized take on the stories of Poe, centering around corrupt CEO Roderick Usher (Greenwood), who, along with his scheming twin sister Madeline (McDonnell), built a global pharmaceutical empire.
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