The Fall of the House of Usher: Biggest WTF Questions and Ending Explained

Table Of Content

• Bruce Greenwood
• Meet the Cursed Kin of ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ Cast
• In other media
• 'Challengers' Heats Up: How Zendaya's Star Power and a Sexy Love Triangle Could Give Gen Z Its Next Movie Obsession
• The Fall of the House of Usher Ending Explained
• Who is Jenn Goicoechea? Everything to know about Usher's wife

Instead, the series is chock full of nods to a good number of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and short stories. House of Usher (also known as The Fall of the House of Usher) is a 1960 American gothic horror film directed by Roger Corman and written by Richard Matheson from the 1839 short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe. The film was the first of eight Corman/Poe feature films and stars Vincent Price, Myrna Fahey, Mark Damon and Harry Ellerbe. Roderick has come from a miserable childhood with a puritanical, sickly mother who believes that “pain and suffering are the kiss of Jesus”. The family is made up of Flanagan’s regular ensemble of actors, and to buy them as relatives requires a lot of suspension of disbelief, but for Flanagan fans, there’s great fun to be had seeing how these favourites fit into his new tale of terror. Alongside his favoured players is Mark Hamill as an unfeeling lawyer/fixer for the Usher family who sounds as if he gargles a pint of nails every morning.

Bruce Greenwood

Only, as evidenced by the noises coming from the basement, Madeline wasn't quite dead. 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. In exchange for this protection, both Roderick and Madeline had to consent to the bargain that at the end of Roderick's life, just before he was fated to die anyway, his entire bloodline would die with him. Roderick and Madeline would also have to die at the same time, leaving this world the same way they came into it.

Meet the Cursed Kin of ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ Cast

The narrator observes that the house seems to have absorbed an evil and diseased atmosphere from the decaying trees and murky ponds around it. He notes that although the house is decaying in places—individual stones are disintegrating, for example—the structure itself is fairly solid. There is only a small crack from the roof to the ground in the front of the building. He has come to the house because his friend Roderick sent him a letter earnestly requesting his company.

In other media

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. The Fall of the House of Usher is an American gothic horror drama television miniseries created by Mike Flanagan. All eight episodes were released on Netflix on October 12, 2023, each directed by either Flanagan or Michael Fimognari, with the latter also acting as cinematographer for the entire series. The fantastic design elements of the house make it seem as if it’s just jumped out of the covers of a popular interior magazine hotel. Not one to shy away from the conventionally accepted norms, Usher’s home features a foyer and master bedroom with black walls.

'The Fall of the House of Usher' ending explained: What happens to the Ushers? - Mashable

'The Fall of the House of Usher' ending explained: What happens to the Ushers?.

Posted: Sat, 14 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

The Biddies of the House of Usher: Episode 8 The Raven

Poe’s writing helped elevate the genre from a position of critical neglect to an art form. “The Fall of the House of Usher” stands as one of Poe’s most popular and critically examined stories. Within a few hours of the narrator’s arrival, Roderick begins to share some of his theories about his family.

'Challengers' Heats Up: How Zendaya's Star Power and a Sexy Love Triangle Could Give Gen Z Its Next Movie Obsession

Interestingly, designers now consider black to be all the rage because of it’s uniquely dark yet stylistic elements. The formal dining room is quite colorful with shades of deep purple, fine curtains, floral print wallpapers and valances. After Roderick gives Auguste his final confession, Madeline bursts through the door of the basement and strangles her brother to death — the same way their mother killed their father. Auguste stands outside in horror, as Verna stands atop the wreckage.

Who’s in the cast of The Fall of the House of Usher?

In the first stanza of the song, Roderick names the monarch Thought (“In the monarch Thought’s dominion”), suggesting that reason rules over this mind. The physical elements of the palace additionally map onto the features of a human face. The “banners yellow, glorious, golden” that “float and flow” on the roof are locks of blond hair. It has two “luminous” windows representing eyes, and the door made of pearls and rubies is a mouth with red lips and pearly white teeth. However, sorrow attacks the palace, leaving the once luminous eyes red from crying, the ruby red lips now pale.

The Fall of the House of Usher Ending Explained

The last three lines of the song (“Through the pale door, | A hideous throng rush out forever, | And laugh — but smile no more”) describe the horrible wailing of the person now that their reason has been overthrown. Although the person described in the song isn’t literally Roderick, the description of physical and emotional deterioration evokes his own, showing self-awareness of his pitiful state. In the story, Fortunato is in the same type of jester costume as Griswold when he meets a similar fate. In fact, Griswold’s death is one of the most direct adaptations, with his story mirroring Fortunato’s pretty perfectly.

She appears near the narrator, but never acknowledges his presence. The narrator and Roderick place her in a tomb despite her flushed, lively appearance. In the tale's conclusion, Madeline escapes from the tomb and returns to Roderick, scaring him to death. The bedroom door is then blown open to reveal Madeline, bloodied from her arduous escape from the tomb. In a final fit of rage, she attacks her brother, scaring him to death as she herself expires. The narrator then runs from the house, and, as he does, he notices a flash of moonlight behind him.

Dupin is even given the final word as he sets the recorded confession at the head of Roderick’s tombstone and tells him he doesn’t get to explain why, and Dupin doesn’t care. He walks into the sunset to go live his life in retirement with his husband, his children, and his children’s children. But, perhaps the cleverest representation of Madeline’s obsession with legacy is that she ties it all to Lenore. Madeline’s love for the girl inspires her to give Lenore the gift of all gifts (in her eyes) before all others. In another life, Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) would have been a poet.

“It’s batshit crazy in the best possible way,” Carla Gugino told Netflix during production. “It has quite a lot of very dark humor, but also really touches the soul.” In the series, Gugino portrays a shape-shifter named Verna, whose origins can be traced back to a — let’s just say — very famous Poe character. “There is a fantastical supernatural element to the story, and she is the manifestation of that,” she added. As these first look photos and posters reveal, Verna isn’t one to be played with. “You could say she’s the executor of fate or the executor of karma,” said Gugino.

The chef’s kitchen area landscape is laden with a white marble backsplash, a couple of Viking utilities, a built-in banquet and gray cabinets to boot. The living room has dark wood floors, a tiled fireside and stenciled wooden beams. The house was built in 1926 and features a five-bedroom setup, six bathrooms and a couple of decent finishes. Remarkably, the property is about four doors down from the celebrity and paparazzi favorite, Chateau Marmont hotel. The music maestro Usher just sold his longtime property in Alpharetta, Georgia for $1.5 million.

Madeline stifles Roderick by preventing him from seeing himself as essentially different from her. She completes this attack when she kills him at the end of the story. The narrator is mysteriously trapped by the lure of Roderick’s attraction, and he cannot escape until the house of Usher collapses completely.

It feels like padding to get episodes to a full hour when Flanagan and company could have leaned even more into the episodic structure that highlights a single Poe per chapter. English majors will likely know where some of the stories are going just by seeing the episode names. When the young and trendy Prospero Usher (Sauriyan Sapkota) decides to host an exclusive sex-and-drugs party at one of dad’s old factories in an abbey, readers of The Masque of the Red Death will know it’s going to be a gruesome scene. However, Flanagan is smart enough to shift the Poe narratives ever so slightly for a modern audience. His version of The Tell-Tale Heart is a modern gem, and “The Gold-Bug” is reimagined as a new brand for the Usher company. But the themes remain the same—guilt, obsession, vengeance, and a supernatural sense of justice.

Perhaps the most obvious parallel lies in the initially shallow crack in the manor, representing the impending destruction of the house. Because the last of the Usher line are twins, that the crack divides the house in two signals their eternal separation in death. The Fall of the House of Usher is obsessed with riches, but where Roderick, Madeline, and the children of the Usher clan see those riches in dollar signs, the series is intent on reminding the viewer what life’s true assets are.