Honourable Mention: The Haunting of Hill House

I had never read Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel, which is shameful given one of my favourite films, The Haunting (1963), was based on it. I recently rectified the situation and read the novel, though I didn’t expect to give an honourable mention here.

I knew that the 1963 adaptation was pretty faithful to the book but there is nothing within the film that could have it (and the house at the centre) labelled as a vampiric building text. This is not true of the later (and also excellent) Mike Flanagan adaptation, The Haunting of Hill House, which made the house vampiric (and the least said about the 1999 film the better).

The house in the novel, however, is immediately coded as living and sentient (if mad):

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

There is a suggestion that it sought to feed from inhabitants when we are told, “The sense was that it wanted to consume us, take us into itself, make us a part of the house, maybe—”. Had the theme been expanded on then I would have been suggesting that the house was, indeed, vampiric but, as a throwaway, I will say it certainly flirts with the trope and this could lead to a vampiric reading.

The mention is offered as Jackson certainly draws the reader to the vampiric on a couple of occasions by associating the house with an imagined vampire inhabitant. In one exchange about housekeeper Mrs Dudley we get:

“‘She probably watches every move we make, anyway; it’s probably part of what she agreed to.’
“‘Agreed to with whom, I wonder? Count Dracula?’
“‘You think he lives in Hill House?’
“‘I think he spends all his week-ends here; I swear I saw bats in the woodwork downstairs.’”

Later we get another mention, whilst discussing Mrs Dudley leaving the house in a car with two others (one of whom was her husband, who the characters had met at the gate of Hill House, but who the second person might have been is never discussed further):

“‘First Murderer must be Dudley-at-the-gate; I suppose the other was Count Dracula. A wholesome family.’”

The use of Dracula is interesting as Castle Dracula was meant, at one point, to be intimately connected with the vampire, collapsing on his death. In this case it is a mention in passing but I would suggest the mention was deliberately used in order to invoke a particular Gothic feel for the reader. Nevertheless, the invocation of Dracula within the text opens the opportunity for me to mention the book here.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Wormtown – review

Director: Sergio Pinheiro

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

When is not a vampire film, actually a vampire film? I struggled with how I would approach Wormtown, a film I first watched at Grimmfest 2025. There is a vampiric parasite at the heart of this – as I’ll explore – and more so it takes beats from I Am Legend, though probably more so the Omega Man. The festival programme said the film had “just a pinch of classic vampire lore and a sly tip of the hat to Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND.” I nearly went down Use of Tropes, but there is something essentially Vamp at its heart (for the infected literally and for the film figuratively).

worms in the eyes

It starts with Mayor Joshua (Jim Azelvandre) going for an eye exam. The optometrist has opened up at night for him as he has noticed a light sensitivity. As the eye is examined, worms are seen inside the eye. So… this is the first thing to note. At the heart of this film are worms and this gives a feel of the Strain (I’ll return to the light sensitivity) and, like in the series the worms are easily passed on. The worms have a blood consumption element and we’ll come to that.

a nocturnal existence

So, the film proper takes place where a large proportion of the town populace are infected. The mayor runs a radio broadcast that is the only signal available and plays gentle country folk and talks about the idyllic little town. The populace sleep through the day and the town comes alive at night and, a tad like the Omega Man, modern technology – mobile phones, Bluetooth and the internet – are all shunned. So the infected, like in the Omega Man, shun technology – but there is a reason, as the signals hurt the worms. They develop skin lesions too, much like in the Omega Man, and they act in a cult like way. The film does examine cult behaviour.

Rachel Ryu as Kara

There is a reason, however. When infected, various worms develop acting like a colony. The primary one is the heart worm, larger than all others, coiled round the heart it feeds on the host’s blood – this being the vampiric element I mentioned. They also develop brain worms, which we can assume moderates behaviour. There are uninfected and three women, living in a warehouse area and trying to solve the infestation, are our primary characters. They are Kara (Rachel Ryu) – who is disaffected, hating their life – and the lesbian couple Jess (Caitlin McWethy) and Rose (Emily Soppe), the latter being the scientist amongst them (she taught science at the high school). There are also uninfected living more normally in town, who have the cultists trying to recruit them nightly and there is an Amish community nearby, left alone as they produce foodstuff.

Jess bloodied

At the head of the film some kids get caught out at dawn and one, Tommy (Milo McDonald), is caught in the sunlight. His mother Alice (Maggie Lou Rader) can’t get to him because of the sun and he starts haemorrhaging blood and worms until he dies. The scene is like a vampire in the sun (with added worms). Jess, out scavenging, finds the body, takes worm samples, films the heart worm in the chest cavity and (when Alice cries out from her home) falls into the corpse. This causes a panic, Rose cleans the blood off back at the warehouse, finds a worm burrow, and manages to cut the worm out of her back. However, the worm-folk take it as a desecration of the corpse.

daylight outfits

As the film develops, we discover that Mayor Joshua is holding secrets. One being the state of his body, with the flesh raw and open. Through him we discover this will happen to all the worm-folk, as he puts it, eventually there is more worm than flesh and they are literally eating the infected – they are parasites, they are not in symbiosis. He is also hiding the truth of what is happening in the wider world. He has Rangers, storytellers he says, but essentially the law and some of those move in daylight in specially designed clothing. We also discover that uninfected smell repulsive to the infected and their vision alters so that the dark is bright to them. One character becomes infected and something goes wrong and two heart worms develop and one has to be extracted – it is a visceral scene and a painful process.

sunlight haemorrhaging

I really like this when I saw it at the festival, and enjoyed it more on second view. The vampire tropes are obvious and the worms themselves vampiric, however (though very different) I tonally got a bit of a feel of Stake Land. The practical effects are brilliant, especially the sunlight haemorrhaging. The story perhaps meanders a little and some of the cult themes could have stood a bit more exploration. But I have a soft spot for this one. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK