Sinister Symmetry: A look into the geometry of death in The Fall of the House of Usher
Mike Flanagan has done it once again with his new Netflix horror show.
Show: The Fall of the House of Usher. Year: 2023. Genre: Gothic Horror/Drama. Directors: Mike Flanagan, Micheal Fimognari.
This essay contains spoilers.
Mike Flanagan’s take on horror is an interesting one. It often deals with familial and generational trauma, and it never fails to surprise me with its subtlety. With The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, there are some familiar faces that we have come to expect from his shows; The Flanagan Cast, if you will. Kate Siegal, Carla Gugino, Henry Thomas, and Victoria Pedretti are some of the reasons I keep going back to his shows.
But Flanagan’s stories hold my attention more for the genius symmetry he injects into all his works. He nearly confesses to this obsession with symmetry through Gugino’s character, Verna, in The Fall of the House of Usher. Verna says, “I’m a creature of symmetry,” and so, I suppose, is anyone who sticks with the show.
The Fall of the House of Usher is a 2023 horror show, and it follows siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher. Roderick Usher has six kids from five wives — Frederick Usher (Henry Thomas), Tamerlane Usher (Samantha Sloyan), Victorine LaFourcade (T’Nia Miller), Napoleon “Leo” Usher (Rahul Kohli), Camille L’Espanaye (Kate Siegal), and Prospero “Perry” Usher (Sauriyan Sapkota).
Together, they are an empire, the face of the trailblazing pharmaceutical company, Fortunato. Except, they aren’t really together. Everyone but Frederick and Tamerlane are considered Roderick’s illegitimate children. They compete and instigate revenge against each other, in hopes of receiving their father’s attention. We watch as slow destruction and then death befalls each Usher heir because of a rapacious deal made by Roderick and Madeline.
There is a symmetry to the personalities of the Usher heirs. This is much like the symmetry in the Crain family in The Haunting of the Hill House, something I wrote about in another essay.
Frederick is a traditional man, with a wife and a teenage daughter. He is next in line to take over Fortunato after his father. Everything about him, up to his clothing, screams ordinary. He mostly wears plain shirts and brown or black office pants. Even the trajectory of his insanity is something that can be guessed. When he takes a pair of plyers and pulls out his wife’s teeth to ascertain dominance, we scream in horror, but we can’t deny that we saw it coming.
Second in line is Tamerlane. She, too, is more or less traditional. Tamerlane starts a fitness brand for the rich, one that many may call an obvious, safe choice. Even the characters in the show ridicule it as a rip-off of Goop. Tamerlane dresses and acts like how we’d expect the head of Fortunato to dress and act: pastel pants and tops, with elegant accessories to match. She only deviates from what is ‘acceptable’ for a Fortunato head inside her bedroom. She is cruel too, but much like every woman with a domineering father, the cruelty is turned towards herself.
Then, there is Victorine. Her girlfriend and she mirror Frederick’s family in traditionality. They are a stable couple and seem to not buy into the insanity that is Roderick’s empire. But Victorine is not ordinary. She creates a technology that keeps the heart pumping post-heart-failure and could potentially extend the lives of people with heart ailments. She dresses chic, with brighter oranges and interesting patterns. Her spiral is something we don’t see coming till the very end. And when it does happen, we almost forgive her, because we realise the pressure she was under.
The Usher kids get less ‘traditional’ and less heteronormative in their family structures, their jobs, and even their clothing as we move from the oldest to the youngest. Each progressive heir buys into the Fortunato narrative of indispensability less and less. As I see it though, their cruelty too becomes less loud, diminishing with each heir, until the last Usher is all but innocent.
Napolean lives with his partner, Julius, and his black cat. Leo is a video game publisher. He seems to bask in the privilege of being a rich Usher kid, though he is not exactly fond of his dad and his ways. Leo is a drug addict, and we see him cheat on his partner. In a drug-induced state, he ends up killing Julius’ cat. The way he treats Julius is horrible, but it is nowhere as loudly cruel as the way Frederick treats his wife.
Camille is the sharp-tongued PR of the Fortunato enterprise. She dresses like she is in a Black Mirror episode with a straight, metallic blond haircut. Her clothes look futuristic, and she wears sharp eye makeup. She is most unlike Frederick. While Frederick is always on the defensive, trying to cover up Fortunato’s mistakes, Camille is on the offensive, getting ahead of the narrative with her PR strategies. She is also the only one who both recognises the hollowness in the company and uses it to her advantage. Everything about her is assured and intimidating, and she is perhaps who Frederick always wanted to be. She is in a polyamorous relationship with her secretaries, who eventually reveal they never really consented to it, despite signing consent forms. Camille is cruel and opportunistic, but it’s a non-obvious, calculated kind of cruelty.
Finally, we have Perry. As Roderick says, Perry is not cruel, just foolish. The last Usher heir is the only one who doesn’t yet have a business of his own. Perry seems gender non-conforming. He lives in a studio apartment with his romantic and sexual partners. I would argue that he is the most disillusioned with the Fortunato empire and the least likely to buy into its money-making narratives.
What’s exciting here is that the Usher heirs die in reverse order of their birth and their traditionality. Until Frederick is alive, Fortunato is still standing. The implication that those closest to the top — the oldest — would be more traditional is also interesting to me. Perhaps a capitalistic company and a billionaire family structure cannot be maintained without subscribing to tried and tested options of abuse, misogyny, heteronormativity, and power.
There is also an interesting balance between Madeline’s and Roderick’s decisions. Throughout, we see Madeline take control of the reins, often making questionable choices. We are made to believe that Roderick is an easily influenced man, living under the thumb of a manipulative woman. But the final decision to, well, sell their soul to the devil (or to the God of Death, depending on how you see it), is Roderick’s alone. That quickly balances the scales, if not tips it in favour of Madeline. We realise, all too late, that the power that’s seeped its way into Roderick’s head is the most sinister, the cruellest one yet.
What is also exciting about this story is how all of this symmetry stands useless in the face of death. Death comes for them all, the traditional and the non-traditional, the path defenders and the path breakers, the innocent and the cruel.
If you enjoyed this essay, you may like my write-up on The Haunting of the Hill House:
I do not own any of the images used in this essay. All images used here belong to Netflix and the original creators. I have used the images solely for commentary on and review of movies.
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