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We Have Always Lived in the Castle

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Watch We Have Always Lived in the Castle with a subscription on Prime Video, Hulu, rent on Fandango at Home, or buy on Fandango at Home.

What to Know

We Have Always Lived in the Castle draws on Shirley Jackson's classic tale to deliver a skillfully crafted mystery that engrosses and unsettles in equal measure.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Stacie Passon

Taissa Farmiga

Merricat Blackwood

Alexandra Daddario

Constance Blackwood

Crispin Glover

Uncle Julian

Sebastian Stan

Charles Blackwood

Paula Malcomson

Helen Clarke

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‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ Review: An Arch, Feminist Fairy Tale

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By Jennifer Szalai

• May 16, 2019

In “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” a playfully arch and unsettling film based on Shirley Jackson’s 1962 novel , there’s nobody obvious to root for; everyone is dour, foolish, phony or deranged. Possibly even murderous. Under Stacie Passon’s precise direction, this gothic fable of isolation and violence expertly treads a fine line between tragedy and camp.

Merricat ( Taissa Farmiga ), still childlike at 18, lives in the cavernous Blackwood family chateau with her older sister, Constance (Alexandra Daddario), and their sickly Uncle Julian (a reliably furtive Crispin Glover ). The girls’ parents died several years ago after eating a suspicious meal that left Uncle Julian debilitated and the sisters shunned. Constance, unfailingly coifed and composed, makes do as a dutiful homemaker, baking pies and canning fruit with a glistening smile plastered on her pretty face. A skulking, slouching Merricat endures the taunts of the townspeople when she makes weekly trips for provisions, rushing home to bury trinkets in the castle’s enormous garden and casting protective spells.

The sisters take care of each other; they cuddle in bed and fantasize about living on the moon, which hangs outside of Merricat’s window like a cartoon cutout. Their home is full of lush fabrics, gorgeous wallpaper and a worrying number of candles. (Piers McGrail’s cinematography makes the tableaus look like twisted photo spreads from Life magazine.) Farmiga’s Merricat speaks in a clipped cadence that sounds both creepy and competent; her knowledge of mushroom toxicology is troublingly comprehensive. Uncle Julian silently glides into the frame in his wheelchair, suddenly reciting cryptic lines from the family history he’s writing. Constance tends to the house in what appears to be a state of willful oblivion, looking cheerful and stunned.

The delicate balance of the household is upended with the arrival of Charles ( Sebastian Stan ), a dashing cousin who seems helpful at first but whose authoritarian streak reveals itself when he takes an aggressive interest in Merricat’s buried treasures and starts calling Constance “Connie.” (Having him chug milk from the carton is also a nice touch.) Like the jeering men in the town, Charles turns out to be an entitled patriarch; under every languid grin lies a leer and a smirk.

Mark Kruger’s screenplay isn’t subtle, but then neither is Jackson’s novel — a sharp, demented fairy tale in which the women live happily ever after despite the men, rather than because of them. The outside world is cruel, capricious, inhospitable; only when the sisters lock themselves inside their crumbling castle can they truly be free.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.

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Movie Reviews

'we have always lived in the castle' — and it feels like it.

Andrew Lapin

The "we" in We Have Always Lived in the Castle refers to Merrricat (Taissa Farmiga) and Constance (Alexandra Daddario). Charles (Sebastian Stan) is the new guy. Brainstorm Media hide caption

The "we" in We Have Always Lived in the Castle refers to Merrricat (Taissa Farmiga) and Constance (Alexandra Daddario). Charles (Sebastian Stan) is the new guy.

We have always lived in Shirley Jackson's castle, whether we knew it or not. The Vermont author's fables — grim visions of humans driven mad by forces they don't understand — have been a part of the American subconscious ever since her breakout short story "The Lottery" sent New Yorker subscribers into dry heaves in 1948. As the modern horror/thriller world has largely gone stale outside of a rarified few voices like Jordan Peele, filmmakers have turned to Jackson like a study-abroad child who moves back home. First there was Netflix's 2018 miniseries The Haunting of Hill House , and now we have a long-gestating film adaptation of her final novel, We Have Always Lived In he Castle .

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How haunting is 'hill house'.

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Shirley jackson gets to the heart of the home in 'let me tell you'.

But calling Castle "horror" would be a misrepresentation of the work, which is really a Gothic psychodrama that eats itself from the inside. The story centers around the peculiarities of the Blackwood sisters, the ones in the giant gabled manor up on a hill. They were orphaned years ago after their parents succumbed to a dinnertime poisoning. Who poisoned them? Constance, the elder Blackwood sister, was acquitted of their murder, but she's too terrified to even leave the house, let alone plan a gruesome arsenic attack. Maybe the answer instead lies with 18-year-old Merricat, a self-taught botanist and a nervous wreck who routinely nails or buries family artifacts in the garden to keep evil spirits at bay.

This mystery is tough to render on film, because it's so dependent on the inner mindsets of the characters. But any adaptation that can't sell this central hook will put the story's other elements — Constance's sexual repression and the public's simmering hatred of the Blackwoods chief among them — out of whack. It's a shame, then, that director Stacie Passon (who previously helmed the erotic drama Concussion ) makes the creepy stuff too low-key, less a case of building dread than growing impatience.

This is despite a mostly solid cast. Taissa Farmiga plays Merricat with her anxieties front and center, blindly battling a world she doesn't understand, while Alexandra Daddario makes Constance into a beautiful, naive waif whose cluelessness practically renders her a ghost. Two men are also in the picture: Crispin Glover is always halfway to disturbed, so he makes a fine Uncle Julian, the girls' dithering relative who was paralyzed by the poison attack and now spends his days obsessively recreating that deadly dinner in his memoirs. But Sebastian Stan, as the dashing cousin Charles who shows up at the house to woo Constance and make a stab at the family fortune, is never quite able to pull off the duplicitous charm of this strange new interloper.

Merricat naturally hates Charles, as he represents a threat to her carefully conceived order of the house. But she's pretty worked up even before he arrives, wilting from the effort of running errands in the village. Merricat's unreliable nature, the way her own sense of passivity sits at odds with her actual role in the Blackwood power dynamic, is another tough thing to pull off onscreen. If you just take her at face value, she can't be much more than a scared, stunted girl throwing temper tantrums, and that's essentially what she becomes in the film. It's a big part of the reason why the middle stretches of Castle feel so repetitive and dramatically inert, as we simply watch Merricat staking out Charles from a distance. The film misses its chance to really milk the simmering anger for all it's worth.

Of more interest is the broader picture of the town as seen through Merricat's eyes. Farmiga lets her whole body tense up when she has to leave the house; it's clear this girl has inherited her parents' disdain for common folk. And by showing us the masses who despise her right back, the film gets its chance to leave Merricat's head and explore prescient ideas of anti-elitism and mob mentality. It only takes a little spark to set the public off, their faces lit up by the (sometimes literal) flames of a regular order restoring itself.

Perhaps if the "castle" had a bit more atmosphere to it, the film's 96 minutes would feel richer. A crumbling old mansion up on a hilltop is an invitation to embrace the cinematic possibilities of Gothic architecture, everything stretching from the old Frankenstein and Dracula films and Hitchcock's Rebecca to the more recent creaky thrills of Crimson Peak (or even The Haunting of Hill House ). Inherent to the classic setting is a certain amount of lavish decoration, an exoskeleton of gloom, that this film severely underplays with its flat lighting and cramped living spaces; the Blackwood manor mostly seems like just an old house. Which might be a fate scarier than anything Jackson could imagine.

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‘we have always lived in the castle’: film review.

Stacie Passon’s sophomore feature, 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle,' stars Taissa Farmiga and Alexandra Daddario as sisters traumatized by a dark family legacy.

By Justin Lowe

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Two young women challenge the presumptions of patriarchy in Stacie Passon’s ’60s-set We Have Always Lived in the Castle , adapted from the novel by Shirley Jackson, who also penned the horror mystery The Haunting of Hill House . Incorporating elements of drama and suspense, Passon’s pic avoids directly confronting her heroines’ covertly sociopathic tendencies, preferring to view them as the outcome of internalized trauma rather than criminal intent.

Since the unexpected deaths of their parents by arsenic poisoning six years earlier, 18-year-old Mary Catherine “Merricat” Blackwood ( Taissa Farmiga ) and her older sister, Constance ( Alexandra Daddario ), have lived together in isolation. The women share the cavernous Blackwood family mansion with their wheelchair-bound Uncle Julian ( Crispin Glover ), who was badly debilitated by the incident. Despite Constance’s acquittal in the murder of their parents, Merricat lives in fear of the townspeople of Shirleyville, who continue to suspect Constance of the killings and harbor longstanding grievances against the Blackwoods, forcing Constance to confine herself to the property of “the castle.” Merricat attempts to ward off the locals’ abiding malevolence by casting supernatural spells, burying family and personal objects in an underground plot in the woods surrounding the estate that she’s consecrated to protect herself, Constance and the Blackwoods’ legacy.

Release date: May 17, 2019

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Passon, working from a script by Mark Kruger, feints toward American Gothic-tinged suspense early in the film, with DP Piers McGrail’s camera stealthily searching the Blackwoods’ cavernous mansion while Merricat’s voiceover dwells on the untimely death of her parents. Later plot developments shift the genre emphasis more toward melodrama, as a heightened sense of peril threatens to tear the devoted sisters apart when Merricat’s rudimentary magic, drawn from The Book of Spells and Incantations , fails to provide the protection she craves.

Neither can she predict the future, so she’s not expecting the arrival of their handsome and charming cousin Charles Blackwood ( Sebastian Stan ), in his fancy red convertible sports car. He’s come to visit and get reacquainted with the sisters and Uncle Julian, but Merricat doesn’t remember him at all. Her suspicions about his motives only intensify when he begins showing inordinate interest in various valuables around the mansion. It’s his intense focus on Constance that most alarms Merricat, however, and alerts her to the threat he poses, particularly when he begins bullying Julian, whose deteriorating memory leaves him confused and vulnerable. Some kind of horrible confrontation seems inevitable, and Merricat isn’t at all sure she’ll be able to protect her family from Charles’ rage and greed.

With intense, deep-set eyes and her hair tightly pulled back into two thick braids, Farmiga makes for a formidably determined teen who’s constantly facing harassment and dismissed by practically everyone except her sister and uncle. Farmiga transforms Merricat’s desperate attempt to achieve independence into a monumental struggle with the inner demons that threaten to consume her. Daddario’s counterpoint as her reserved, self-deluded sister is all outward calm until escalating conflict releases her carefully concealed trauma. In his role as the imperious Charles, who soon gets accustomed to running the Blackwood household to suit his preferences, Stan’s gentrified menace proves no match for the sisters, although he succeeds in terrorizing Glover’s initially vibrant Uncle Julian into cowering submission.

Passon favors carefully appointed camera compositions enhanced by production designer Anna Rackard’s sometimes flamboyant decor and a frequently saturated color palette. Occasionally extreme camera angles and several ominous flashbacks suggest Merricat’s troubled mind-set, but prove at odds with the realistically suspenseful plot.

Distributor: Brainstorm Media Production companies: Great Point Media, Furthur Films, Albyn Media Cast: Taissa Farmiga, Alexandra Daddario, Sebastian Stan, Crispin Glover Director: Stacie Passon Screenwriter: Mark Kruger Producers: Robert Mitas, Jared Ian Goldman Executive producers: Michael Douglas, Jim Reeve, Laurence Hyman, Kieran Corrigan Director of photography: Piers McGrail Production designer: Anna Rackard Costume designer: Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh Editor: Ryan Denmark Music: Andrew Hewitt

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Film Review: ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’

A solid, but faithful adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s gothic fairytale about two peculiar, ostracized sisters hiding a dark family secret.

By Courtney Howard

Courtney Howard

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If the recent failure of films such as “The Little Stranger” and “Marrowbone” has taught us anything, it’s that audiences don’t seem as thrilled with good, bone-chilling Gothic mysteries as they once were. Today, when it comes to spine-tinglers, moviegoers seem to value jump scares and gore over psychological brooding. That hasn’t stopped filmmakers who, every few decades, revive the works of novelist Shirley Jackson. Her stories speak to a darker side of humanity. Stacie Passon , director of “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” sharply channels the author’s atmosphere of dread, paranoia, and isolation, making the past feel prescient.

Socially awkward 18-year-old Mary Katherine Blackwood ( Taissa Farmiga ), nicknamed “Merricat” by her family, lives with her agoraphobic sister Constance ( Alexandra Daddario ) and anguished, barely lucid Uncle Julian ( Crispin Glover ) on the sprawling grounds of Blackwood Manor. The gorgeous Gothic mansion sits high above a small New England town, like a judgmental god lording over the people.

After a mysterious tragedy involving an arsenic-laced sugar bowl befell the Blackwood family six years prior — one that robbed the young ladies of their parents and left Uncle Julian an invalid — the Blackwoods have kept to themselves, only venturing into town for necessities. But that doesn’t mean they’ve successfully avoided the ire of the resentful victims of their father’s ideologies. Merricat spends her days casting magic spells to make sure the Blackwood kingdom is kept safe from any perceivable threats, like angry townsfolk or nosy gossips. She buries talismans — such as dolls, coins, and other accoutrements — in her backyard to ward off evil spirits. However, when their estranged, suave cousin Charles (Sebastian Stan) pops in for an unannounced visit and begins assuming the role of the family patriarch, his presence completely upends Merricat’s world.

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Both the cinematic adaptation and the source material are less concerned with “whodunit” (although we do find out by film’s end) than they are about the issue of female agency at a time not especially conducive to it. In that sense, Passon and screenwriter Mark Kruger are successful. They bring to life Jackson’s resonant, evergreen narrative dealing with women finding their voices, adding stylized flourishes in the process.

Not only has Merricat been silenced by the men in her life, but Constance also has experienced a similar muzzling. She’s caught in the grief stage after losing her freedom, romance, and parents in one fell swoop. Her greatest defense mechanism is denial. Feelings of otherness and oppression permeate the picture. The ensuing dramatics briefly dip into surrealism, as when Merricat sees an unsettling vision of her parents. These sentiments of sorrow are expressed with a pressing urgency and, for better or worse, tend to be a smidge too obvious.

While Merricat’s wardrobe doesn’t change much, sister Constance’s clothing does. The crinoline skirts under her impeccable dresses get more and more voluminous as the story progresses, as if to reflect the growing number of secrets stuffed underneath. The Jordan-almond-like, candy-coated quality of DP Piers McGrail’s cinematography hints at a darkness underneath the Blackwoods’ fairytale lifestyle. Composer Andrew Hewitt’s score may as well be the grand, orchestral version of whatever emanates from the music box trinket on Constance’s vanity. Anna Rackard’s production design and Louise Mathews’ art design also reflect the characters, specifically with the ’50s-era kitchen: Like the girls after their tragedy, it’s been remodeled.

Reviewed at LA Film Festival, Los Angeles, Sept. 22, 2018. Running time: 96 MIN.

• Production: A Great Point Media, Further Films, Albyn Media production. (Int’l sales: Great Point Media, London.) Producers: Jared Ian Goldman, Robert Mitas. Executive Producers: Michael Douglas, Laurence Hyman, Kieran Corrigan, Jim Reeve, Robert A. Halmi.
• Crew: Director: Stacie Passon. Screenplay: Mark Kruger, based on the book by Shirley Jackson. Camera (color, widescreen): Piers McGrail. Editor: Ryan Denmark. Music: Andrew Hewitt.
• With: Taissa Farmiga, Alexandra Daddario, Sebastian Stan, Crispin Glover.

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle does Shirley Jackson’s gothic mystery justice

This 1960s-style adaptation hits every mark, without gore or jumpscares

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Five years after most of the Blackwood family is mysteriously poisoned, the remaining members have forged a peaceful life, isolated in their mansion on the hill. Their days are ruled by ritual: Constance (Alexandra Daddario) cooks and cans; Uncle Julian (Crispin Glover) obsessively writes a memoir of the poisoning that left him wheelchair-bound; and every Tuesday Merricat (Taissa Farmiga) risks going to the village for supplies.

All is relatively well until their worldly cousin, Charles (Sebastian Stan), arrives for an extended visit and disrupts the carefully balanced anxieties of the household. Constance tries to maintain familial peace as she falls for Charles, while Merricat fluctuates between aloof and antagonistic, and Charles belittles Julian for his lingering illness. Meanwhile, the villager’s virulent hatred of the Blackwoods gathers like storm clouds on the horizon. Something has to give.

Adapted from Shirley Jackson’s classic gothic mystery, We Have Always Lived in the Castle captures the complexity of the original, exploring mental illness, community, isolation, and the long trauma of abuse. Whereas the recent Netflix adaptation of Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House took compelling imagery and characters but mostly ignored the core messages of the source material, this adaptation not only preserves Jackson’s themes, but elaborates on them with lush, detailed visuals.

Director Stacie Passon captures a style of 1960s domestic femininity that wouldn’t be so out of place on Instagram, one of perfect hair styles and jewel-like jams. The visual language of the film, which frequently uses slightly low or high camera angles, gives a feeling of being just outside the conversation, the perfect metaphor for the Blackwood’s estrangement from the bitter villagers. The mansion is replete with rich colors and era-perfect touches which, if we’re lucky, will inspire a whole genre of 60s-gothic cinema.

Aside from the mystery of what happened the night of the poisoning, the story’s strength comes from the shifting power dynamic of all the strong personalities. Every performance is note-perfect, from Stan’s near-parody of swaggering masculinity to Daddario’s maternal, sometimes frighteningly beatific, gentleness. Glover shifts smoothly between ominous and heartbreaking, and Farmiga communicates a kind of listless physical oddity that’s peculiar to Merricat.

When translated to screen, the literary-gothic format can sometimes feel plodding, since the genre relies so heavily on internal emotions. We Have Always Lived in the Castle avoids this pitfall not only through the strong performances, but by paying off on a tense atmosphere. Both Jackson and Passon create a mood so palpable that it seems the characters themselves feel its effects. Although the mystery is satisfied, the true terror isn’t derived from the lack of knowing, and tension doesn’t recede once everything is clarified. Instead, the horror of We Have Always Lived in the Castle comes from watching powerlessly as the tension mounts, straw by straw, before breaking spectacularly.

The film doesn’t rely on gore or jumpscares because the true terror of the story is something real and common; it’s about how abuse can become a pattern that’s hard to escape, how convention traps people, how hatred has momentum, and how small pains build into disasters. Despite being a period piece, We Have Always Lived in the Castle has a terror all the more frightening for how familiar it is.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is now out in theaters and on VOD

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2018)

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle Ending, Explained

‘We Have Always Lived in The Castle’ tells the story of the Blackwood sisters who live in their house on the hill, away from the resentment and hatred of the people in the town. Their history is marred with tragedy and the world hasn’t made anything easier for them. They keep to themselves and try not to get into any trouble. But what happens when trouble comes looking for them? The entry of a distant cousin in their lives kickstarts a chain of events that lead to death and destruction and the revelation of some dark secrets. If you haven’t yet seen the film, you should bookmark this page and come back later.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

What Happened to the Blackwood Family?

As the camera advances through the dilapidated Blackwood Manor, Merricat’s (Taissa Farmiga) voice rings in the charred remains of her house and we are introduced to the Blackwood sisters. Evidently, they are the only surviving members of their family. The parents died a couple of years back, and a newspaper clipping tells us that Constance, the older one, had been arrested for it. However, the jury let her go.

As the story moves forward, we discover exactly how they had died, and have our suspicions about who actually did it. But it is the “why” that nags at us the most. Constance ( Alexandra Daddario ), who is hated by the whole town so much that she has stopped stepping out of the house, is the prime suspect. We try to read into her optimism and the smile that she sticks on her face, no matter what the situation, is disconcerting at times. She certainly has some issues, but she is not the one that people should be afraid of. It is Merricat.

Looking and acting like a twelve-year-old while being an eighteen-year-old girl, Merricat actively practices witchcraft and uses it all the time to keep her sister safe. We think that Constance has been looking out for her sister, but all this time, it is Merricat who has been protecting her. Six years ago, the Blackwood family sat down for dinner. All except, Merricat. She did something outrageous (we don’t know what) and for her punishment was constrained to her room and deprived of dinner.

However, she had already put her plan in motion by then. She put the arsenic, that her sister had brought to kill the rats, in the sugar. She knew Constance would be safe because she doesn’t take sugar. Her parents and her aunt took a good amount and died. Uncle Julian took it sparingly, and as a result, survived to tell the tale. However, he suffered severe physical and mental trauma.

The cops immediately suspected Constance, because, according to them, Merricat was just a child to pull off something like this. Moreover, she was the only one who sat down for dinner and didn’t choke on her food. Constance immediately figured out that it was her sister who did this, but her maternal instincts didn’t allow her to speak of it to anyone.

In fact, her first reaction was to clean the bowl in which Merricat had put the poison. She took the blame on herself, but was acquitted by the jury, partly because she really was innocent and the case against her wasn’t so strong, and partly because she was “too well-bred to be put into prison”. However, being cleared by the law doesn’t mean she is off the hook. The whole town hates her now, as well as her sister, and they are confined in their family home, taking care of their paralysed uncle.

Why Did Merricat Kill Her Family ?

Now that we know the “who”, we should focus on the “why” of the case. Why would a young girl want to kill her parents? What could possibly drive her to do such a thing? There are a number of theories regarding this, but two of them make the most sense.

The first explanation is that their father had been abusing them- physically or sexually. We never get a proper confirmation of this; the exact words are not spoken in the film. But we do get the sense that the father was a “wicked” man. He was certainly a stern person and, from the looks of it, had both the girls under his thumb, especially Constance. She was a complaint girl who would easily give in to any male authority around her.

Even though she would smile all the time, we can easily see the struggle she has to put up to hold it on her face. She has been taught to live like a woman who doesn’t speak much, who is good at all the chores, and who does what she is told. Though this could be the normal upbringing of her family, there might also have been some hurt involved here. Either her father would physically punish her for small mistakes (hence the want for perfection), or he had been molesting her.

When Merricat lingered on the boundary of puberty, he turned his attention towards her. He must have already been using brute force to discipline her, but now, he took it a step further. While Constance was the kind of person who could silently endure her pain, Merricat is the one who would shout and scream and fight back. And maybe, that’s exactly what she did. She told her mother, or maybe her aunt, about it. It could be that they asked her to keep quiet. Perhaps, instead of helping her, they asked her to go along with it. Perhaps, that’s what they had done with Constance too. But Merricat is not the person you can simply console and ask to make peace with everything. When she came to know that her sister had been going through the same thing, she decided to do something about it.

Now, there are two ways in which the events could have unfolded. Because she had created a ruckus, her father punished her by locking her in her room. But before that, she somehow managed to get her hands on the arsenic and poured it on the sugar that she knew everyone, except Constance, would consume. Or, she planned it. She bided her time and chose which poison would be best to do the deed. She didn’t use any garden herbs because that would easily shift the blame on Constance.

When she saw the arsenic brought in the house, she mixed it with sugar, then created a scene, following which she was thrown into her room. At the end of the film, Constance reveals that she knew it had been Merricat all along. She says that their father was a wicked man and that Merricat saved her. Though she doesn’t use the exact words, we can infer their meaning.

Another explanation for why Merricat killed her parents is that she is simply a psychopath . In her first lines, she makes it clear that she has no grief for her dead family and only cares about her sister. While her parents were still alive, she didn’t mingle with the townsfolk, and as a result, had no friends. She grew up with her father’s belief that everyone outside the manor was beneath them. Her father might not have been molesting them, but he surely was a strict man. In a number of instances, she quotes her father, and we realise that she agreed with him on a lot of things.

So, maybe, she didn’t really hate him, until, he did something to her sister. Perhaps, he beat up her, and Merricat didn’t like that, and because no other adult stood up against him, she decided it was time for all of them to hit the grave. But that is not the end of it. No kid likes their sibling being treated harshly, but they don’t go around killing their parents. For a twelve-year-old girl to do something like this, there needs to be the presence of malice in her heart. If the decision to kill four people was so easy for Merricat, then she must be a psychopath. There are a couple of incidents that back this theory.

Remember that Merricat’s mother and aunt had been arguing before dinner? We never get to know why, and because we only come across this information because of Julian’s constant mumbling, we don’t take it so seriously. They were bickering, so what? But give it some thought and you wonder if it had something to do with Merricat. Maybe, her aunt recognised her psychopathic tendencies and wanted her to be sent to a mental hospital, which would have been an asylum in those times. Her mother didn’t want that and was angry with the aunt for saying such a thing.

The arguing could also be related to the sexual molestation theory. Julian uses the word “delicate” to describe their mother, in one scene. Maybe, when Merricat told her about what their father was doing to them, she asked her to comply, just as her sister. But when their aunt came to know about it, she was infuriated and wanted their mother to stand up for them.

Or Is She A Ghost?

In one of the scenes, when Charles (Sebastian Stan) is shouting on Merricat for destroying his room and Constance is trying to calm him down, Uncle Julian says that Merricat had died in an orphanage when Constance was on trial. Charles dismisses this because he thinks Julian is crazy and should be put in a hospital. But we find it hard to let go of.

Why did Julian say that? We know that he isn’t entirely sane at this point. He tends to go back to the night that the murders happened and often confuses Charles for his brother. But that doesn’t mean that what speaks in this state is a lie! If what he said is true, then it changes everything. Is Merricat really a ghost? Or is she a witch who resurrected herself? Ghosts are generally tied to something, the one thing that keeps them bound to this realm.

Maybe, Constance is her tether. Maybe, this is why she doesn’t want to leave her, even if it is to go to town and get supplies. But then, for a whole town to see a ghost doesn’t seem right. Then again, who knows how this ghost thing works? Maybe they never come to know about her death, which is why they can see her! I don’t want to meaninglessly exaggerate this, so we can also turn towards the theory that she had been a practising witch for a very long time, and maybe she was strong enough to cast a resurrection spell for herself! Or maybe, Uncle Julian really did lose his mind and said something that wasn’t true!

The Ending: Are the Blackwood Sisters Happy?

After their house is eaten away by a blazing fire, and they barely survive the wolfish behaviour of the townsfolk, the girls return to their house the next morning. They come to know about Uncle Julian’s funeral, and several people knock on their doors for an apology and leave food for them outside. Charles shows up again but is killed by Merricat when he tries to forcefully talk to Constance. They bury him in the backyard, hide his car and go about their business. In the final scene, after scaring away the boys, the sisters have a little conversation about eating children, and Constance walks away after telling Merricat that she loves him. The younger sister looks at her with an expression on her face that spells relief, satisfaction and intense love, all at once.

We know that Merricat was highly protective of her sister, and maybe, now she is relieved that all the troublesome men are out of their lives. But I am tempted to believe that there is something more here. One of the things that make me wonder why Merricat killed her family, about her motivation to take such a drastic step, is her love for Constance. Had her attachment turned into an obsession? Did she want her sister all for herself and got rid of everyone else in her life, the people who could separate them? For example, when she came to know about her affair with Jim and that they were planning to run away together, she snitched to her father.

Now, if the girls were being abused by their father, why wouldn’t Merricat want her sister to escape? Why wouldn’t she want her to be with someone who could take her away from this? In fact, she could have run away with them! Why did she close that door? Maybe because she saw Jim as a threat. She didn’t want him to come between them. This is also why she didn’t like Charles the moment he entered their house. Of course, he was no saint either. But he was being good to Constance, in the beginning. He wanted to please all of them. Merricat didn’t fall for it because, one, she has killer instincts about people, and two, she saw him as a threat.

In any case, the sisters are left alone now. The hatred inside the townsfolk came out in the form of the riot they created, and once it was all out, the anger was quelled. They even apologised for their behaviour. So, for one thing, they won’t bother them as much. Secondly, with all the toxic people out of their lives, the girls can now live in peace and solitude. If trouble comes knocking again, be assured, they will take care of it.

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle Review: It Might Be Time to Move

We Have Always Lived in the Castle , an adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s final novel , is one of those films that has you wondering what might have been. Yesterday, I wrote about Hulu’s  Catch-22 , which had a similar problem; the source material is so specifically rooted in the literary form that you can’t adapt it without losing most of its essence. Catch-22 mostly got away with it by retaining the essential circularity of the book’s satirical conceit, but this film, directed by Stacie Passon, has no such luck.

The problem is that  We Have Always Lived in the Castle  is about insularity; the hidden-away peculiarities of the upper-crust Blackwood sisters, Merricat (Taissa Farmiga) and Constance (Alexandra Daddario), one of whom may or may not have poisoned the rest of the family at dinner. Having been accused of the crime but later acquitted, Constance lives in total isolation, terrified of leaving the family’s hilltop manor, reliant on her nervous, hunchbacked sister to brave the local townsfolk — who despise the Blackwoods — and return with supplies. The girls’ paralyzed Uncle Julian (Crispin Glover), a victim but also a survivor of the poisoning, lives with them, attempting to immortalize the family’s oddities in his memoirs.

This is a psychological family drama in the gothic tradition, which is reliant on the kind of internal justification that literature does very well but film hardly bothers with at all, so, for the most part, We Have Always Lived in the Castle  plays as an off-kilter sequence of undeveloped quirks and happenings that all feel separate rather than connected. Once Sebastian Stan shows up as the handsome cousin Charles with an eye for both Constance and the family’s hidden fortune, things descend into outright silliness, with none of the plot’s revelations able to surprise or build anything in the way of actual tension — much less fear.

And without that creeping dread and gestating terror,  We Have Always Lived in the Castle  just doesn’t work, at least not in the way it’s supposed to. A game and talented cast help to buoy the narrative’s aimless and repetitive middle portion, but because we never really get a sense of who these characters are, or what motivates and defines them, we also never really manage to care what happens to any of them. The film raises lots of interesting ideas but never bothers to address them, and offers lots of potentially scary — or at least unsettling — elements without much of a care for how they might work together. The result is inert, and not quite weird enough for you not to notice.

Article by Jonathon Wilson

Jonathon is one of the co-founders of Ready Steady Cut and has been an instrumental part of the team since its inception in 2017. Jonathon has remained involved in all aspects of the site’s operation, mainly dedicated to its content output, remaining one of its primary Entertainment writers while also functioning as our dedicated Commissioning Editor, publishing over 6,500 articles.

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Review: ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ never comes to life

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It’s no small feat to make Shirley Jackson’s eerie prose portraits of cloistered eccentrics in hostile surroundings feel like the forced whimsy of Tim Burton in sleepwalk mode, but that’s how Stacie Passon’s “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” regrettably plays.

The “Haunting of Hill House” author’s 1962 novel told a fractured yet deeply personal fairy tale of secluded sisters — 18-year-old Merricat (Taissa Farmiga), beholden to magic spells, and agoraphobic older Constance (Alexandra Daddario) — who live in a well-kept, isolated manor, and are bound by murderous tragedy and enduring ostracization from the nearby village.

The movie, though, which was adapted by Mark Kruger, is all surface polish and play-acted oddness, from the cloying symmetry of the stalely composed shots (Wes Anderson, what have ye wrought?) to the cartoonish depiction of some awfully complicated — nigh perverse — family relationships.

Farmiga, her outsider mannerisms hamstrung by the art school project surroundings, and Daddario, whose mannered turn is routinely upstaged by her ’50s-housewife apparel, simply have no chemistry, when the Blackwood sisters’ bond is at the core of Jackson’s us-against-the-world theme.

The appearance of Sebastian Stan as suspiciously friendly, manipulative cousin Charlie shows initial promise as a source of tension, but it too fizzles as we edge closer to the truth behind the crime that’s enshrined them all as town freaks. Heightened but airless, this “Castle” is like a checklist of the novel’s peculiarities, rather than its singular soul brought to life.

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‘We Have Always Lived In The Castle’

Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes

Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center

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What Did the 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle' Ending Mean, Anyway?

Sep. 26 2019, Updated 11:18 a.m. ET

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a mystery thriller film based on a novel by Shirley Jackson, the same author that brought us the chilling tale of The Haunting of Hill House . It's available to watch on Netflix, and it's another intriguing tale featuring supernatural forces and magic that you'll undoubtedly want to watch if you enjoyed Jackson's other Netflix movie. But if you've already seen it and aren't quite sure exactly what happened by the end of the movie, we're here to help. 

The story follows an 18-year-old named Mary Katherine "Merricat" Blackwood, who lives with her older sister Constance and their sickly uncle Julian. Constance was tried and acquitted of poisoning her parents and as such hasn't left the house in six years. 

On Tuesdays, Merricat goes out to do the shopping in the town, though villagers constantly harass her because they think her sister got away with murder. Still Merricat has to do the regular errands to make sure the family has supplies. 

Eventually, a family friend named Helen Clarke tries to get Constance to leave the house and get back into the world. Merricat uses her own special magic to bury "articles of power" around her home to ward away evil. 

When she discovers that their cousin Charles has come to visit one day after running errands, a chain of events unfolds that results in Charles taking over and charming Constance into being "stolen away." Unfortunately, Charles is an abusive man and harms Constance and Merricat. 

We Have Always Lived in the Castle explained: What happens at the end

In the end, to stop Charles from taking over the family and bringing any harm to Constance or herself once more, Merricat sets Charles's room and his belongings on fire, as the fire department arrives and the house begins to burn. Julian dies of smoke inhalation and the villagers rush in to destroy the house.

As the sisters return home to salvage what's left of their family home, they have a talk in which Merricat decides she is going to poison the entire village for what they've done to the home. 

Constance remarks that this is what Merricat already did once before to their parents, revealing that Merricat actually saved their family from their father, who was apparently as wicked as Charles ended up being. Charles ends up returning, and Merricat beats him to death with a glass snow globe. 

With Charles dead, the sisters bury him in Constance's garden. They go back to cleaning up what's left of their house as some kids from the village come by to make fun of them and tease them. 

Merricat leaves the home and they become immediately terrified. When she goes back inside, Constance tells Merricat she loves her, and they share a warm moment together, revealing the first time Merricat has smiled throughout the movie. The movie concludes. 

Essentially, it's revealed that Constance never committed any crime, and instead took the fall for her sister Merricat, who dabbles in spells and magic. (And apparently, arsenic.)

With this fact out in the open, and the sisters now safe from Charles and the outside world, they can finally grow together again as sisters. It's unknown, however, if Constance decides to rejoin the outside world again from the ending of the movie. It's an exciting reveal, and part of an exemplary horror movie that you've got to see.

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Columns > Published on January 23rd, 2023

Book vs. Film: "We Have Always Lived in the Castle"

Reading a Shirley Jackson novel, one has the sense of being spellbound or beguiled. It isn’t so much that her writing is surreal, though there is a dreamlike quality to Jackson’s narratives — a quality that dips its toes into the realms of nightmares but never quite fully submerges itself, leaving readers unnervingly aware of horrors at the periphery of consciousness. Violence, too, often stays outside the margins, visible and vibrating, though never quite actualizing. Of course, exceptions do occur, perhaps most famously in her legendary short story “The Lottery,” which ends in an explosive and barbaric, though altogether commonplace, act, but by and large, Jackson is perhaps the master of terrifying her readers by leaving things unsaid, of merely hinting at terrible things lingering like acrid, smoky air around her characters. 

Because of this more ephemeral, less tangible aspect to Jackson’s writing — and because the critical reappraisal of her oeuvre is sadly more of a modern phenomena — we have seen scant film adaptations of her work. There’s a 1969 short film based on “The Lottery” that many probably saw in middle or high school as a supplement to the reading of the story (and also a staple on numerous YouTube channels). Her most famous novel,  The Haunting of Hill House, received two theatrical adaptations and a limited Netflix series that was more remix than remake (read all about the journey from page to screen here ). 

And then there’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle , a 2018 film based on what is widely considered Jackson’s masterpiece and the final novel published in her lifetime (1962, three years before her sudden death). Written by Mark Kruger, who penned the script for Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh , and directed by Stacie Passon, known primarily for TV work like Dickinson and last year’s The Serpent Queen , the film — at least from a plot standpoint — stays pretty faithful to the source material. The story centers on Mary Katherine “Merricat” Blackwood, whose entire family — minus her sister Constance and Uncle Julian — died from arsenic poisoning years prior. Constance stood trial for the murders, given that the arsenic had been placed in the sugar bowl and only she put none of the laced sweetener on her berries. Merricat had been sent to her room with no dinner as a punishment, and while Julian did ingest the arsenic, it wasn’t enough to kill him, though he did become wheelchair-bound and suffer some mental deterioration as a result of the poisoning. Though she was acquitted, the town citizens still believe Constance committed the crime, and this in addition to the longstanding hatred of the Blackwoods’ snobbish affluence and penchant for exclusionary land ownership have left the remaining family members social pariahs, particularly Constance, who suffers from severe agoraphobia. Only Merricat ever ventures into town to buy groceries and check out items from the library.

Their life of isolation and routine gets disrupted by the arrival of Cousin Charles, himself an outcast from his side of the Blackwood clan, who comes to pay his belated respects to the deceased. He particularly dotes on Constance, who seems torn between the matriarchal role she plays for her sister and uncle and a desire to once again live her life, fueled by fantasies of running off to Italy with Charles. There is a whiff of incestuous romance between the cousins that Jackson leaves vague, although his disdain for Julian and Merricat is quite explicit. It becomes quite clear Charles is only after the riches strewn about the Blackwood estate — many of which have been buried by Merricat or otherwise used in her pseudo-occult and of late unsuccessful rituals to ward off evil. 

The book ends more or less where it began (status quo upheld): Merricat and Constance resume their isolated lifestyle, only without Uncle Julian and the upstairs portion of their home, now completely destroyed from the fire. The townsfolk still keep their distance, though as a mass act of penitence for trashing their house (and also as an extension of the fear they feel toward the reclusive women) they regularly leave food on the front porch, ensuring Merricat no longer has to go into town for supplies. Charles does come sniffing around again, but Constance refuses to answer his calls, and he eventually goes away. The final lines reassert Merricat’s resolve to always protect Constance from harm, a dedication we have always known, but one that has new meaning, now that we know more than we knew before (or at least, we think we know more than before).

Again, Kruger and Passon’s film more or less recreates this narrative for the screen, and in many places they do capture Jackson’s illusory storytelling style (particularly the first dinner scene after Charles shows up). The primary cast — consisting of Taissa Farmiga as Merricat, Alexandra Daddario as Constance, Crispin Glover as Julian, and Sebastian Stan as Charles — all deliver in their respective roles, especially Glover, who is much younger than the Julian of the novel, but who applies his signature oddball intensity to the character with such vigor you hardly notice the discrepancy in age. There are a few minor changes to certain whens and wheres of the narrative that have no significant bearing on the proceedings, but the big changes made, while possibly inconsequential if one separates book and movie, ultimately put too much distance between the filmmakers and Jackson — and as such, those who love the novel will probably feel disconnected from the film. 

Primarily, Kruger and Passon make explicit what the original author mostly leaves to the imagination. For instance, in the scene where we learn Merricat was the poisoner, Constance thanks Merricat for saving her from their “wicked” father — not an outright acknowledgement of molestation, but a statement much more concrete than anything uttered in Jackson’s work. But the film’s most pronounced departure revolves around Charles and the women’s relationship to him. The romantic chemistry between him and Constance is far more overt — including an effectively icky scene in which the cousins (read: father-husband/daughter-wife) slow dance to the song “Daddy’s Home” by Shep and the Limelites (featuring the lyrics You’re my love you’re my angel / You’re the girl of my dreams / I’d like to thank you for waiting patiently / Daddy’s home, your daddy’s home to stay ). Furthermore, whereas Jackson’s Charles is ultimately more bark than bite — a threatener of physical retribution with no follow through — this film version casts him as an overtly violent man who pins both Merricat and Constance to the floor in sexually suggestive positions, further solidifying the incestuous implications of his role as cousin and substitute father. 

In the case of the latter attack, which occurs the morning after the fire, Merricat clocks Charles with a snow globe and then stabs him with the shattered remnants, after which the women bury his corpse in the back garden — a far more explosive (cinematic?) end than with his literary counterpart, who is fearsome but ultimately pathetic. There is nothing inherently wrong with this change, except that it does rob Constance of her agency, given that in the novel she casts Charles away on her own and doesn’t have to rely on Merricat to save her, particularly since, moments before he lunges on top of her, she seems ready to give in to his repeated promises of whisking her away to a better life. As such, Constance never actually chooses the cloistered future with her sister she looks forward to at narrative’s end; rather, it is pretty much forced upon her. 

All this is to say We Have Always Lived in the Castle is not a bad film, but it certainly is one that, while very nearly faithful to Jackson in both body and spirit, ultimately falls short.

Oh, and it also needed way more Jonas the cat.

Get  We Have Always Lived in the Castle at Bookshop or Amazon

About the author

Christopher Shultz writes plays and fiction. His works have appeared at The Inkwell Theatre's Playwrights' Night , and in Pseudopod , Unnerving Magazine , Apex Magazine , freeze frame flash fiction and Grievous Angel , among other places. He has also contributed columns on books and film at LitReactor , The Cinematropolis , and Tor.com . Christopher currently lives in Oklahoma City. More info at christophershultz.com

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle Book vs Movie Review

written by Laura J.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962)

We Have Always Lived in the Castle directed by Stacie Passon (2018)

I have previously done The Haunting of Hill House book vs movie if you want to check that out! In this book there is a street called Hill Road which leads me to think both stories take place in the same universe…

Book review

On one hand, I like how this book gives you so much to think about. The story isn’t complicated, but there is so much symbolism and so many metaphors. It is one I had to think about and read about quite a bit in order to figure out what Jackson was saying. This certainly isn’t a surface level thriller/gothic story. So in that regard I would give it high marks. It wasn’t a book that I just couldn’t put down, and despite it being pretty short it did take me a few days to read because I was never in a rush to return to it.

Movie review

I think this movie has good performances; however, I have complaints with the script and the direction this went in. Overall, it stays close to the book but it makes some seemingly minor changes, but those “minor” changes give the story a very different vibe and message then we had in the book. The book also had some dark humor, and I didn’t see any of that come through in the movie. Jackson seems like someone who had a morbid sense of humor at times, and this movie just takes itself so seriously.

From here on out there will be spoilers for both the book and movie!

Setting the story

So beginning with the first act, where we get a feel for the lives our characters are currently living, before someone changes their lives in act two.

I loved in the book how Merricat just tells us about her day going into town and there are rhymes kids yell at her that allude to her family being poisoned. We don’t get the full story until later when they have guests over, and one of the guests wants to hear all about the famous murders.

In the movie, early on we are told in voiceover that her sister Constance was tried and acquitted for the murder of their family. We then later also get the scene with the guest that is asking all of the questions. Since they kept the scene when the women come over for tea, why did they feel to include the exposition at the beginning? I would have preferred they kept it like the book where we just see Merricat and her interesting routine and her strange family, then over time we get the backstory.

Uncle Julian

We will get to the sisters, who of course are the main characters of the story, but first I wanted to talk about Uncle Julian. First of all, he was also poisoned with the intent of death, however he lived but is now an invalid. Parts with his character in the book are some of the scenes that were funny because of how he is obsessed with remembering the details of that dinner and what led up to it. The way he talks to Constance-the person he thinks tried to kill him and did kill his wife, brother, sister-in-law, and nephew-in a very normal way and telling her how she should have put the poison in some other dish for whatever reason, was amusing. He also has dementia though and has a hard time always remembering who everyone is and what has happened could also contribute to the strange way he talks to her. He doesn’t acknowledge Mary Kathrine because he believes she died in the orphanage while the trial was going on.

He doesn’t know (or does he?) that Merricat is actually the one that poisoned them, so it is interesting that for some other reason he believes she isn’t around.

A part that is in the book, and in the movie though only partly, that I liked was when he is talking about what he will write that day and says, “I shall commence, I think, with a slight exaggeration and go on from there into an outright lie…I am going to say that my wife was beautiful.”

Later he is telling Constance that when he dies to give his papers to someone that can finish his work and he says he wants it to be, “some worthy cynic who will not be too concerned with the truth.”

In both, Julian dies in the end when the house catches fire.

Constance and Mary Katherine

To talk about the sisters, I want to just start with the fact that everyone thinks Constance is the one that poisoned her family but she knows that Mary Kathrine is actually the one that did it. She loves Merricat though and has never told anyone and never even talks to Merricat about it. She doesn’t even appear to be upset that she had to go through a trial and could have been put in prison for being blamed for something she didn’t do.

We know in the book that Merricat was often getting in trouble and being sent to bed without dinner and Constance talks about how she would sneak food to her. So it seems she has always wanted to help Merricat, even when it means appeasing her unhealthy desires such as allowing her to get away with murder.

Merricat also buries things and money in the ground as part of this kind of witchcraft she makes up. In the movie, she is reading a book about spells, but I’m pretty sure that in the book she was just making up her own stuff. But Constance is fine with Merricat’s strange ways. She doesn’t play along and her response is often, “Silly Merricat.” But she doesn’t chastise her.

Constance has become agoraphobic and so Mary Kathrine is the one that will go to town. Mary Katherine likes it this way and when the women come for tea and try to convince Constance to enter society again, Merricat gets very upset.

Cousin Charles

So this is the life the Blackwood’s are living, until their cousin Charles shows up. In the book Merricat hears him knocking and calling, but thinks he is some guy from town or someone who read about them. She runs to get some item for protection, and when she comes back Constance has let her in. In the movie, Merricat had gone to town and when she returns, he is there.

Charles breaks their routine and his outsider’s perspective brings attention to the strange way they live. He is annoyed and disgusted by Julian. He says he makes a mess when he eats, with food all over himself (a details we didn’t get when Merricat was describing life to us which shows that to her it was no big deal and nothing worth noting). He also thinks he should be in a hospital and it shouldn’t be Constance’s job to always take care of him. He also finds it morbid that Julian is always talking about the murders.

He does not like Merricat, partly because she does not like him, but he also is angry that she buries valuable things including money.

In the movie, they have this sexual tension between Constance and Charles, which I did not feel in the book at all. I thought the movie in general just had a lot of sexual tension that had not been in the book and I didn’t like that addition (like didn’t it seem like Mary Katherine was in love with Constance?? Or was I just reading her overprotectiveness wrong). But he woos her with talk of taking her to see the world basically.

In both, he is very focused on the safe and all of the money that is in there because their father hadn’t trusted the banks.

In the book, Merricat often refers to him as a ghost and tries to get rid of him. One evening she sees his pipe sitting on his side table and decides to start a fire with it. In the movie, before Charles noticed the fire, he had been attacked Merricat because he was angry with her. But he stops hurting her when he smells smoke. This was not in the book. He was verbally antagonistic towards her, but he was never physical with her in the book.

As the house is burning, the girls hide while the fire department comes to put it out. While they are getting the fire under control, the townspeople are saying how they should just let it burn. The main firefighter is doing his job though and not listening. However, once the fire is out, he picks up a rock and throws it through one of the windows and this spurs everyone else to threw rocks and go inside and ransack the place. They then find Mary Katherine and Constance and persecute them and ridicule them. Things come to an end when someone yells that Julian is dead and they all need to leave.

After the fire

In the movie, we just see like the following day or two. During which time, people from the town come and drop food off for them, with apologies for what they did. Charles also comes by, trying to manipulate Constance. He eventually breaks down the door and attacks Constance, when Mary Katherine hits him on the head and kills him.

In the book, people from town brought food to apologize but it was of the course of time. They also always came when it was dark because while they felt guilty and wanted to make amends, they didn’t want their neighbors to see.

Charles also comes back, but it seems like quite a bit of time has passed and he brings another guy with him. They hear him telling the guy about how they have so much money inside, and again he tries to manipulate Constance into opening the door but she doesn’t and he eventually leaves and that is that.

In the book we also see years down the road and how the Blackwood home because the local “haunted house” with all sorts of lore about the two women who live inside.

The truth of the murders

In the book and movie, Mary Katherine says something about how she will put death in the townspeople food and kill them to which Constance says like last time? In the book Merricat says yes, which is when we find out for sure that Merricat is the one that killed their family. Constance brings it up again the next day and apologizes for talking about it and says she will never mention it again.

In the movie, she says the thing about “like you did last time” and from here we find out that their father was physically abusive and that was why Merricat killed him and she killed the mother because she would allow it to happen and not stop him. It also seems implied that he was abusive to Merricat as well. This was not in the book at all.

Throughout the book (and movie), Mary Katherine is always telling Constance how she wants to take her to the moon and how great it will be. In the end, when they are more isolated than ever, Constance says she is happy and Merricat says, “I knew you would like it on the moon.” Mary Katherine has achieved her goal of living an isolated life with her sister.

Abusers often want to isolate the person they are manipulating, and so I think of Merricat as being controlling over Constance and manipulating her. She says she loves her, but often people are manipulative and abusive under the guise of love.

In the book I said Constance always called Merricat silly, but in the end of book and movie, Merricat says something like, “I wonder if I could eat a child?” (Because the townspeople have spread stories about how the witches in the house eat children). In the past, Constance would have dismissed her with a “silly Merricat”, but here, she is going along with it saying, “I don’t know how I would cook a child.” We see that she is “converted” to Mary Katherine’s ways.

Change’s to the sisters

The movie doesn’t play Merricat as a wicked child, as she is often referred to, but rather someone who is protecting her sister form the evil people of the town as well as their own family of course. I did not like this change at all. I also didn’t like Charles being physical with them and they then killing him. I think it makes the story obvious and basic to have them being victims of men who are physically abusive. I like the mystery in the book. We see that their father was very greedy and prideful and mean, but we also see that Merricat is kind of a strange kid so maybe she killed her family simply because she didn’t like them but not because they were evil people per ce.

In both, we get a scene where Mary Katherine is imagining a dinner with her family and in both they are saying how Merricat is their most loved daughter and she deserves whatever she wants and she will never be punished and how she never does anything that needs to be punished. In the movie, this came across as her wishing her father would have stopped being abusive but knowing that it wasn’t going to stop. In the book, I read this as Merricat having a delusional self-centered pride where she felt she should have been treated that way but wasn’t. Maybe in the book she has some kind of personality disorder where she has an inflated ego and feels people should love her more than anyone else and she should be always praised and never punished.

Having said this, in both she says how much she loves Constance and that she is the most precious thing to her. So it isn’t like she is a psychopath who is incapable of love…

Men and women/nature vs world

I think the women in this book-Mary Katherine and Constance, represent nature and the men-Charles and their father specifically, represent greed and worldly desires. Constance and Merricat are both connected to the earth, Merricat buries things for her spells, and Constance has a green thumb. While the men value money and status.

With the poisoning, we see the gender roles change and women are now running the house and the focus is no longer on wealth and their status. The townspeople had hated them because they were rich snobs, but now they hate them because there is murder in their family. They had been cut off from the town because they thought they were too good for the townsfolk, but now they are cut off from the town because the town fears them and they (at least Constance) fears the town.

Julian is the surviving man, but he is an invalid and he had been poor to begin with. That is why he was living with them, because he and his wife had spent their inheritance poorly and now had to live with his brother who had made wise investments and was still well off. Despite their wealth, they still were sticklers about how much Julian and his wife ate and how much their presence was costing them.

It is interesting that Merricat chose to include killing Julian and his wife as well as her own parents. But anyway, Julian becoming wheelchair bound and being subject to Constance’s care is a symbol of how the men have been “crippled” in the house and the women are now in charge.

Also, Charles showing up and messing up the order of things could be an example of how they are living their nature-oriented life, but then this worldly presence comes in and disrupts it all. One he is around, Constance also starts saying all the time about how it is all her fault and she shouldn’t have let things get to so bad-meaning them being so isolated, Merricat being a mess all the time, and Julian not living in a hospital. He brings an outside perspective and brings attention to the fact that they way they live isn’t normal.

The fire is interesting too because fire represents cleansing and purification, and the end of one thing and the start of another. In the book, she doesn’t even compare their house to a castle until the end, because the way the fire burned the top makes it look like a castle to her.

In both, they make clothing our of table clothes, but in the movie specially their new clothes are made from a white cloth. Having them now dressed in white also seems to symbolize their rebirth, their purity, and while I just said rebirth, it also is a ghostly look because they now become ghosts to the town.

The townspeople

Speaking of the town, I think it was an important detail in the book that the townspeople bring the food at night so others can’t see. Mob mentality and wanting to conform to what others think, lead them to all hate the Blackwood’s and ruin their home. Yet when they are isolated from each other, they all regret what they did. However, they can’t show their contrition in daylight for fear of being judged by the town.

That scene after the fire when they drag out the sisters, almost has a sacrificial feel to it. Like the sisters are being punished not for what they have done, but in a sacrificial way for what others have done. They are the scapegoats and so they pay the price. Yet maybe Julian is the real “sacrifice” since he is the one who dies and puts an end to their persecution.

Book vs Movie

While the movie is visually pleasing and the casting was fine, I did not like the change they made with why Merricat poisoned her family. I also didn’t like the changes with Charles. It is just so basic to turn it into a victimized woman revenge story essentially.

Initially, I wasn’t crazy about the book. But the more I think about it, the more I like it (and maybe even love it?) I prefer The Haunting of Hill House, but this one is definitely worth reading as well.

Also, I didn’t even get into Jonas the cat, but I would be curious to hear if anyone has thoughts on him like what he might symbolize. Or maybe he just symbolizes once again, Merricat’s connection to nature and that’s it. Let me know what you think!

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