The Fall of the House of Usher: Kate Siegel, the Most Repeated Face in Mike Flanagan's Netflix Works

2023-10-13 13:43:53

Netflix has a new phenomenon in the making. The fall of the house of Usher landed on the platform as one of the company’s highlights in the month of Halloween, being the new gothic adventure of Mike Flanaganthe disciple of horror who left his mark through great streaming hits such as Silence (2016), Gerald’s game (2017), The Haunting of Hill House (2018), The Curse of Bly Manor (2020) o midnight mass (2021). And precisely because they were popular series and films, viewers will immediately notice that many of the actors from those productions appear in this new story. However, there is one face that stands out and causes déjà vu because we saw it in each and every one of them.. And there is an explanation as curious as it is romantic.

Many of the faces that appear in the chapters of The fall of the house of Usher we saw them in the director’s works. It’s a common Mike Flanagan tactic.. Something similar to what he does Ryan Murphyhaving made Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters his muses since American Horror Story (where they also tend to repeat with the same actors in each season even if they are different stories). In the case of The fall of the house of Usher You’ll dream of seeing Henry Thomas again, Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, Samantha Sloyan, Annabeth Gish and many more. But, above all, you can’t help but recognize the actress who is always present in each of the director’s stories: Kate Siegel.

And it is that Behind his horror stories hides a love story. Why Kate Siegel She is the wife of Mike Flanagan and a frequent collaborator with whom she shares the same passion for the genre and stories. Without going any further, we saw it in Oculus, Silence, Ouija, Gerald’s Game, the two series of The Curse, Midnight Mass and now in The Fall of the House of Usher. Awesome. They met at a casting, and although they didn’t feel Cupid’s crush right away, That day marked the actress’s life forever..

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Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel are already two horror heavyweights in streaming: he behind the cameras and she in front as a muse (Photo by Gary Gershoff/WireImage)

THE ROMANCE THAT OPENED A NEW WORLD OF OPPORTUNITIES

Kate Siegel He was about to change careers, launching himself into the world of international finance, when he met the director who would open up a new world of opportunities for him. His presence in Hollywood did not stand out, being one of the thousands of performers who navigate the business as fleeting figures in television series (he was in an episode of Lost souls, Numbers y Castle), until ten years ago everything changed.

The director and the actress met at the casting of a film that was never made. She was in love with the character and attended very prepared, knowing every line of the nine pages of the script that she had been given. She took the test twice but she didn’t feel that she had managed to convey the passion she felt for the project. At that moment, Mike Flanagan told her to repeat it but, this time, to do it for herself, following her own intuition. “I was surprised because I didn’t know what he meant. I had forgotten. But something in me was brave enough to take my time, which seemed like an eternity and was probably two minutes, and figure out what I wanted. [transmitir]. And my performance changed forever that day“, said to Collider in 2021.

In any case, the relationship did not blossom that day. It was a while before Flanagan called her to offer her a small role in Oculus (2013): the story of crime and supernatural phenomenon where she played one of the many mirror victims who returned in the form of a ghostly illusion. The original actress had been injured and they needed a replacement. The director promised her that if she accepted the job he would keep her in mind for other projects. And she kept her promise. (Fountain: EW)

HUSH (2016) Flanagan achieves a hit in just 81 min. of pure tension. His script is simple, but powerful, with good twists and clever solutions. Kate Siegel holds the plot perfectly, conveying every second of terror that the protagonist experiences. Highly recommended. pic.twitter.com/cm1TBIHXK4

— Hᴇʟʟʏ Rᴀᴠᴇɴ???? (@hellycrow) September 15, 2023

Love arose in the following years, supporting each other. While the director helped her prepare for her auditions, he read her ideas and scripts. But one day an idea arose that would change the course of that collaboration. It happened when, during a dinner, they came up with the story of a deaf-mute author terrorized by a murderer in a cabin in the middle of a forest. And so they wrote the script together Silence (2016), an idea that helped Kate express all her frustration towards the industry, where she couldn’t quite find her place. “I was working during a time in my life when I felt like she couldn’t be heard,” she told EW in 2021. “They weren’t taking me seriously and I felt like I had lost my voice. With that project I tried to transform my insecurities and weaknesses into my strengths.”

Silence It was a little gem of 2016 streaming. A horror film that resorted to the home invasion subgenre and the slasher to create a story full of tension and suspense. It was an example of Flanagan’s creative ingenuity where Kate Siegel shined as the great protagonist. Unfortunately, although Netflix He premiered it at the time and had it in his catalog for a long time, it is not currently available (I confess that I would love for it to be recovered, not only so that those who missed it at the time can discover it, but because I would not lose the opportunity to see her again).

And since then they haven’t stopped working together. They married in 2016, forming a family with three children and a filmography that shines together. And Kate’s face is the most repeated, common and I would say even essential in the works of Mike Flanagan, crowning herself one of the ‘scream queens’ of horror in streaming. And not always being the protagonist. Sometimes her presence reduces him to a mere fleeting or secondary role. But it is never missing.

Kate Siegel, Mike Flanagan’s muse in ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ (Tina Rowden/Netflix)

It was the case of Ouija: the origin of evil (201) o Gerald’s game (2017), which was filmed while pregnant and where the main protagonists of the adaptation of Stephen King’s novel were Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood playing the wife who wakes up handcuffed to a bed with her husband who died of a heart attack at her side. . But then she found her place. The success of those productions opened the way for the couple, reaching the stage of The Haunting of Hill House which not only became one of Netflix’s biggest hits of 2018, but also the platform to launch them both towards international recognition.

The success of the series led to a multi-year contract for Flanagan and her partner Trevor Macy, where Kate became a child psychologist with psychic powers that were activated through touch, forcing her to wear gloves (The Haunting of Hill House), in the original heir of the protagonist mansion (The Curse of Bly Manor) or the survivor of an island who receives a mysterious visit from a new priest (midnight mass). And now she does it once again with The Fall of the House of Usher.

In this eight-part limited series inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 short story, we find a story that gives glimpses of Dopesick, Medicina letal y Succession in the equation to tell the rise and destruction of a powerful family through the confession of the patriarch (Bruce Greenwood). As the plot progresses, the character details the ghostly events after the death of each of his children. Kate Siegel plays one of the descendants, an egocentric businesswoman, with the air of a dominatrix, who encompasses perversity behind an unscrupulous family.

The Fall of the House of Usher is a series that shines in the aesthetic section and the visual impact, transforming this gothic and ghostly story into a tale about morality, while abusing the erotic tone to create a tale of gluttony, ambition and destruction. And while the reviews have been mostly positive, I personally consider it a vehicle for Flanagan’s creative genius but not his best work. It is predictable, even in the scares, and is far from the gloomy, dark and enveloping atmosphere of midnight mass (for me, his best work), or the dramatic depth of the anthology The curse. But if we leave comparisons aside, The Fall of the House of Usher once again shows that Mike Flanagan is here to stay and with his great muse.

This article was written exclusively for Yahoo en Español by Cine54.