Netflix used their Friday night slot at New York Comic Con to showcase some of their spookier programming. The panel, dubbed Netflix and Chills, featured four new Netflix properties: this month’s The Haunting of Hill House and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, plus the off-in-the-distance Umbrella Academy and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. We already know plenty about Sabrina (though panel attendees also got lucky enough to watch the premiere, which is awesome), but much more was revealed about Hill House and Umbrella Academy, and the creative minds behind Age of Resistance offered the first-ever look at the world of the show.Here’s a rundown of some of what we saw, and what we have to expect from Netflix’s most bone-chilling fare in the future.
THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY WILL BE OUT IN FEBRUARY (AND WORTH THE WAIT)The adaptation of Gerard Way’s superheroes-with-a-twist comic premieres February 12 of next year, and the actors portraying the Hargreeves, The Boy, Cha-Cha, and Hazel all share a great deal of enthusiasm about the series. Aidan Gallaghar (The Boy) is a self-admitted super fan, and Mary J. Blige (Cha-Cha) has been wanting to play evil for years, so we have that nightmare come true to look forward to.
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE IS HYPER-FOCUSED ON … SOMETHINGHill House follows a trend we’ve seen among TV and movies a lot lately: secrecy about the content of the project. Though the panel did feature two genuinely terrifying clips of the series, there was little the cast could say about why those things were happening, or when, or how they affected the overall arc of the series. But hey, given the horrific nature of Hill House, even knowing what’s coming doesn’t protect the viewer from reacting strongly to jump scares.“I screamed,†admitted Oliver Jackson-Cohen, who plays Luke, when describing his experience of watching the series after filming wrapped. Jackson-Cohen did say that in episode six (of nine), there’s a bit of a turning point that shapes what happens in the three successive episodes. But he couldn’t say what it was, and maybe it’s better that way.THE DARK CRYSTAL WILL TELL US MORE ABOUT THE GELFLING WORLDThere is no set release date yet for Age of Resistance, which will serve as a prequel to the 1982 fantasy. But thanks to director Louis Leterrier and executive producer Lisa Henson, we know some key details about the series we didn’t know before. The ten episodes, which were filmed over the course of a year, will stick to the production style set forth in The Dark Crystal. “I love CGI,†said Leterrier. “But we’re not using CGI in this one. It’s puppets, man. Puppets!†According to Henson, the newest technology is “actually very old technology: greenscreen,†which was used to remove the puppeteers from shots, creating a more realistic look for the Gelfling society the show is about.In the broadest of strokes, Henson described the overall arc of the show: an exploration of the Gelfling culture that crumbled by the time The Dark Crystal began. Both Avatar: The Last Airbender and Game of Thrones—chiefly their expansive, developed worlds—served as inspiration for the series, which I’m suddenly much more interested in than I was before. (Also, we were offered the briefest of glimpses of the Skeksis, which are eerier than ever.)WE HAVEN’T SEEN THE LAST OF NETFLIX’S CREEPY VENTURESAlready this month, Netflix released a children’s horror anthology called Creeped Out and the horror movie Malevolent; Apostle (another horror film, this one a period piece) and Haunted (a reality show about real-life paranormal experiences) are still to come. Given the combination of early buzz and fan excitement, it seems likely that Hill House and Sabrina will get picked up for additional seasons, and one can only hope that Netflix will continue collaborating with the Henson company. It’s a great time to be a horror fan with access to streaming services, and as of now, there’s no end in sight.
Images: Netflix, Universal Pictures
