Even Stephen King Calls Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher a 10/10 Masterpiece

With horror on the rise as a favorite genre, Netflix has boldly stepped into the spooky genre’s scene with original television shows on its platform. First testing the water with the worldwide-famous Stranger Things, which was more of a science fiction thriller with horror elements, Netflix quickly branched out on international platforms with K-Dramas like All Of Us Are Dead and Parasyte: The Grey, as well as hiring director Mike Flanagan to craft multiple miniseries hits.

Although Flanagan creates and writes his own work, he has become better known for taking inspiration from famous stories and adapting them into entirely new creations, with many homages to the original works and a great deal of respect for the themes and motifs. The Haunting collection, with The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, was a massive hit, spawning additional miniseries options on Netflix. Then, in 2023, Flanagan’s Poe adaptation The Fall of the House of Usher shook the world and even impressed the king of horror himself, Stephen King.

Mike Flanagan Took Liberties With Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher

The raven wears a mask in the fall of the house of usher.

Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher follows the Usher family and especially the siblings Roderick and Madeline (impressively played by four separate actors and actresses each). It shows their shady rise to power, the corrupt nature of their business, and the eventual deaths of Roderick’s children, all while featuring a mysterious woman named Verna who seems to have a hand in the fall of the Ushers. Verna is an anagram of Raven, referring to THE Raven, made famous by Edgar Allan Poe, which also happens to be the title of the show’s eighth and final episode.

The title of the series echoes Poe’s popular 1839 short story, The Fall of the House of Usher. But just because they share the same title doesn’t mean that these stories are identical. As with much of Mike Flanagan’s work, a great deal of the original piece is taken as inspiration, and the same themes are kept, but in this case, Flanagan also incorporates other stories and poems by Poe into his macabre miniseries.

Each episode title reflects a different Poe work, with eight in total: “A Midnight Dreary,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “Murder in the Rue Morgue,” “The Black Cat,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “Goldbug,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Raven.”

With three timelines being shown, there’s one that reflects the original The Fall of the House of Usher story most, as an older Roderick sitting in his home telling someone (his friend in the story, who tells the tale through his own observations, but an attorney in the show) how the fall of his family came about.

In the original tale, he has no children, and the downfall of his family isn’t touched on quite as much, referring to a supposed family curse rather than anything outright supernatural. In the show, he has six children, all of whom are corrupt and named after a Poe tale. Their downfall is directly tied to a supernatural being called Verna, who makes a deal with the Usher siblings to secure their fortune. However, it is clear that in exchange, their descendants would die before the siblings ever did, which the brother and sister ignore.

Stephen King Gives High Praise to Mike Flanagan

Although The Fall of the House of Usher was released in 2023, it got yet another boost in popularity in 2025 from an unexpected, but on-theme source — Stephen King. On August 4, 2025, Stephen King spoke about the show on X, saying, “Scary, involving, with writing that’s witty and moves the plot. There’s a case to be made for Mike Flanagan being the Quentin Tarantino of horror.”

Now, this phrase, coming from the King of Horror himself, is quite high praise indeed, although it is important to note that Flanagan and King already have a working relationship due to Flanagan being the director of a few of King’s book-to-movie adaptations.

Whether or not one is a fan of Tarantino, a comparison between Flanagan and Tarantino is, in and of itself, intended to be a compliment of the highest order. But the most impactful part of what King says actually has to do with the writing, as he himself is one of the most prolific horror writers of all time.

This means that not only did Flanagan adapt older works by another of the most famous macabre writers of all time in a way that remained true to the original story, but he also did so in a way that was fresh and clever enough to impress one of the horror greats.

Although Stephen King’s style of writing is a bit different than what The Fall of the House of Usher reflects, there are some similarities. King is known for using straightforward writing without overindulgent prose, as well as characters and smaller towns that reflect the “real” Americana. The Flanagan story can’t be described as such, because Poe’s works are rather ornate and clever, as poems so often are.

Additionally, the show is set in Washington, D.C., and follows an extremely privileged family who are anything but normal. Both King and Flanagan have an interest in well-thought-out characters with impactful lines, in addition to a love of using horror and supernatural elements to put up a mirror to modern society so as to reflect and criticize.

The Fall of the House of Usher was met with much praise and admiration upon its initial release, with special kudos for the editing, character writing, and acting, particularly from Mark Hamill and Carla Gugino. The addition of King’s compliment nearly two years after its release has shown the world how much staying power the spooky Poe/Flanagan tale has.