Netflixs Haunting of Bly Manor is a puzzle box disguised as a ghost story

Let’s just get this out of the way: the follow-up to Netflix’s excellent horror series The Haunting of Hill House is nowhere near as scary as its predecessor. The sequel, dubbed The Haunting of Bly Manor, is still about a house filled with ghosts and people dealing with terrible grief. And while those ideas can be terrifying on their own, that’s not really the point of the show. Instead, Bly Manor is more of a narrative puzzle box — one where ghosts and the afterlife are just another part of the mystery.

The new show has at least a few things in common with Hill House: a sprawling, haunted mansion; a cast of characters each dealing with some form of grief or loss; and a premise loosely based on a classic horror story. (In this case, it’s...

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