On October 12, 2023, Netflix released the eight episodes of Mike Flanagan’s miniseries The Fall of the House of Usher (henceforth referred to as The Fall). Edgar Allan Poe’s same-titled story may not have been recognized and/or read by all viewers – whether young or more mature – but the title itself belongs to a wide and collective memory of horror, darkness and mystery in a great part of the western world. Yet, The Fall is not just an adaptation of a single Poe story. Simultaneously a horror and mystery story, a family dynasty drama, a fantastic tale, and an impressive narrative construction, Flanagan’s The Fall employs more than thirty Poe stories and poems along other generic horror conventions. I argue that The Fall constitutes a new frontier for adaptation studies, namely a reworking of multiple texts by a single author presented as a unified narrative, which I will call an anthology adaptation.

Flanagan’s increasing popularity as a new horror master overshadows his contribution to adaptation practices. After all, his 2023 addition to the horror genre with The Fall is not the first time Flanagan uses multiple works by a single author to create a coherent television series. The Midnight Club (Netflix, 2022) drew its inspiration from Christopher Pike’s work while the miniseries The Haunting of Bly Manor (Netflix, 2020) tailored several of Henry James’s novels and novellas into one show. Flanagan’s ability to synthesize his series and miniseries based on multiple texts by a single authorial voice not only forges a new path for the field of adaptation but also constructs an audiovisual text that can serve as a historical and cultural turning point in the history of narratives. I dare to imagine a university adaptation/media class in 2245 (much like Poe1 wondered who the President would be in 2045 in his story “Some Words with a Mummy”2) where Flanagan’s The Fall is meticulously examined to unearth its obscure nineteenth-century literary sources.

Having said that, however, I have to underline the following: Poe’s fiction and non-fiction oeuvre has been studied meticulously in academia, and his popularity as a master of psychological horror and first-person narration has led to innumerable film and television adaptations around the world. Yet, the goal of this essay is neither to delve into the author’s life and publications, nor to offer a review of the most paradigmatic adaptations including Netflix’s recent addition, however helpful this would be for future research. Instead, this essay will concentrate on the adaptation process used by the creator of The Fall. Flanagan delved into Poe’s entire oeuvre and created a unique form of adaptation, meaning that the series’ main structural edifice, as well as the entire narrative atmosphere, cover a major part of Poe’s literary omnibus.

The article uses The Fall as a case study to theorize the concept of an anthology adaptation, based on an examination of its narrative structure, and discuss its particularities and its strong suitability for our contemporary television landscape. In what follows, I first present a brief overview of a relevant adaptation trend of mixing fictional characters from different literary sources in a single film; then, I analyze the narrative structure of The Fall on a macro-narrative level, assisted by Roland Barthes’s two classes of units (“Introduction to”). Finally, I offer a close reading of The Fall’s initial pilot sequences to unveil the meticulous and narratively impeccably-placed Poe sources on a micro-narrative level, and to show how Flanagan and his artistic team crafted a new and unique narrative that, besides its sophisticated construction, speaks to some of the major anxieties of the western world in the twenty-first century.

The multi-monster movie: foreshadowing the anthology adaptation?

To this date, there are only a few examples of adaptations that include different original sources to construct a unified audiovisual narrative. We can trace a similar strategy back to Universal and its effort to capitalize on its 1930s success in the horror genre. Thus, the late 1930s and 1940s introduced the multi-monster or “multiple monster” films (Hutchings 188), such as House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945). Both films join Dracula with the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s monster in their respective plots. By exploiting the reputation it had painstakingly created in the early 1930s, and by “teaming” up various monsters, Universal “reminded audiences” of its “association with the genre’s most iconic characters,” as well as its place as the genre’s main Hollywood producer (Nowell 26). Multi-monster films reappeared in the early 2000s with Freddy vs. Jason (2003), which joins the two monsters from their respective franchises, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. Additionally, Van Helsing (2004) sees Bram Stoker’s literary scientist fight Dracula (and other vampires), Mr. Hyde, and werewolves, among other supernatural creatures. I posit that these multi-monster films serve as predecessors to anthology adaptations, by sharing a number of horror conventions and adaptation strategies, yet differing in two crucial points.

Multi-monster movies as adaptations and The Fall as an anthology adaptation share the generic conventions of horror. Namely, both use the effect of fear, and a suspension of disbelief (as a majority of horror stories conventionally rely on logically impossible events and/or the existence of supernatural threats of unimaginable origins). Yet, there remain two critical differences between the Universal films and The Fall: first, the former’s original stories do not have the same author, and second, they rely mainly on a collective cultural recognition of famous monsters and their main traits. In other words, the Universal films depend on the viewers’ prior knowledge of Dracula as a dark creature who feeds on blood, Frankenstein’s monster’s immense strength and distinctly recognizable physicality, and Dr. Jekyll’s monstrous alter ego, Mr. Hyde. In contrast, The Fall does not fulfil the prerequisite of previous knowledge of any monster. Poe’s legacy consists more of feelings of doom, darkness, melancholy, addiction, mental instability, passionate longing, psychopathic tendencies, and malevolent acts than worldwide famous characters with definitive traits. Poe’s first-person narrators suffer, in most cases, from unknowable-at-the-time reasons and exist in a rather permanent state of liminality. Their struggles and the absence of scientific therapies, especially in cases of mental issues, place them in continuous and unbearable situations. And this is perhaps one of the reasons Poe continues to enjoy considerable popularity in the twenty-first century as attested by his enduring symbolic capital.

Constructing an Anthology Adaptation

Roland Barthes’s ground-breaking 1966 article “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative” provides our theoretical framework because it contains the most suitable method to distinguish the elements that Flanagan drew from the various Poe sources. What Barthes proposes in his article, at the apogee of structural semiotics, is that all narratives, irrespective of issues of length, country of origin, and time, use and operate on “two main classes of units,” (93) functions and indices which are further subdivided in two categories each. Functions include cardinal functions, main plot actions/events without which the story would be a different narrative and catalysers, secondary actions/events that assist the eventual cardinal function. For example, in the imaginary mini-narrative, “Jenny opened the door hurriedly and left the room,” the cardinal function is the fact Jenny left the room and the catalyser is that she opened the door. The indices include the indices proper, information about a character’s psychological situation, plot atmosphere, etc. and the informants, information with direct meaning (i.e., character names, information about physical appearance, names of places, cities, professions, etc.) that help “to identify, to locate in time and space.” (Barthes 96). Returning to our mini-narrative, the name Jenny is an informant while the adverb “hurriedly” is a unit of indices3 because it describes her emotional state. Functions concern narrative actions, while the unit of indices operates “on the level of narration” and its role “is continuous, extended over an episode, a character or the whole work.” (Barthes 95).

Equipped now with Barthes’s methodology, we turn to The Fall to identify the Poe sources that make up its structure on a macro-narrative level. A first reading of The Fall unfolds as the tragic family story of the twins Roderick (Bruce Greenwood) and Madeline Usher (Mary McDonnell), who created a pharmaceutical empire upon a fantastic deal with an unknown and seemingly immortal supernatural being on New Year’s Eve of 1979. The being who has the form of a woman called Verna (Carla Gugino) promised the twins all the wealth, power and influence they could ever imagine with no repercussions whatsoever for perpetuity and in return, asked for only one thing: that their bloodline died with them. By that time, however, Roderick already had two small children. The two siblings, driven by unstoppable ambition and a desire to change the world, accepted Verna’s proposal, doubting perhaps the bizarre and therefore improbable nature of the proposal. The Fall’s pilot opens, however, with the funeral of the last three of Roderick’s six children more than four decades later. Madeline did not procreate. After the initial sequence, which will be later discussed in detail, the narrative proceeds with its main story arc, its narrative backbone: the account of the Usher twins’ history, narrated by Roderick to the Assistant United States (US) Attorney C. Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly). The narration takes the form of an official confession including Roderick’s admission of all the legal transgressions of the Usher corporation and the real reasons his children died.

Notwithstanding the shock value of this very short description concerning the twins’ rather nonchalant reaction to the price they would pay for unlimited wealth and power, the miniseries is predominantly a long first-person narrative that uses flashbacks to tell its story. On a macro-narrative level, and as the title suggests, The Fall’s main plot is inspired by the same-titled Poe short story, published in 1839. The story unfolds as follows: the unnamed narrator is called to visit his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, for a few weeks as the latter is struggling with some “acute bodily illness — of a pitiable mental idiosyncrasy which oppressed him” (398). During his stay, the narrator observes his friend’s deteriorating condition, his obsessions about the strange power of the house, his pain over the illness of his twin sister, Madeline, and her eventual death, and his lamentation over his being “the last of the ancient race of the Ushers” (404). The ending takes on a supernatural turn when the narrator and Roderick realize they have buried Madeline alive. Her unforeseen comeback marks the twins’ death and the narrator’s narrow escape from their mansion before its “mighty walls rushing asunder” (417), razing it to the ground. As shown, the story’s syntax is quite action-less. The cardinal functions at the center of Poe’s short story include a visit of a friend to an unwell friend in his gloomy family home, his discussion with Roderick on physical and emotional health and his observations, the entombment of his mistaken-as-dead sister, the twins’ death, and the narrator’s escape from the mansion before its destruction in a storm. As Barthes observes, the two main classes of units can lead to a first, albeit general, categorization of literary works: “Some narratives are heavily functional (such as folktales),” relying more on actions (Barthes’s cardinal functions and catalysers), “while others… are heavily indicial (such as 'psychological' novels)” (93), leaning more on the exploration of feelings. Indeed, Poe’s story relies more on creating an atmosphere of terror and despair than presenting a chain of events under a cause-and-effect logic.

And it is this simple syntax and cardinal function, a friend confiding to another friend, that Flanagan retains in his anthology adaptation on a macro-narrative level. The Fall begins and ends with Roderick and Dupin in the Usher family house. It also retains the indices proper of gloom, terror, suspense, and confessionary tone of the source, as well as the major informants (the names of the twins and the old house, among others). Madeline keeps her role as the twin sister and the end witnesses the destruction of their family line, as well as their house. Yet, Flanagan envisions a bigger story, bookended by the first and the last episode to create his anthology adaptation and honor Poe in a more pluralistic way. He is interested in the Ushers’ “very ancient family” (Poe 398), and he thus constructs its origin, its ascent to power, and its eventual demise by making two significant changes to Poe’s short story. The first is the transposition of the plot to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with all the consequences this time movement entails. The second is that the narrator is no longer a friend but a foe; he is Auguste C. Dupin, who is considered the first detective of modern fiction (Grimstad 22) in Poe’s famous story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841). This change is instrumental in Flanagan’s vision, despite the fact Dupin and Roderick’s relationship is almost as long as Poe alludes to in his story. In Flanagan’s iteration, the Ushers, and more specifically Roderick and Madeline, are the creators and owners of a billion-dollar pharmaceutical company that is responsible for the dissemination of an addictive drug, Ligodone4, and according to Dupin, thousands of deaths. As Assistant US Attorney, Dupin has been trying for decades to convict the Ushers for crimes, such as document falsification, fraud, and conspiracies, but all his efforts were in vain. Verna and the unhallowed deal between her and the twins back in 1979 had made sure of that. Yet, the pilot episode begins with Roderick inviting Dupin to his paternal home to confess to all charges and to explain the deaths of his six children.

The existence of Roderick’s six children is a brilliant addition to the miniseries and further solidifies the creation of an anthology adaptation. Roderick’s long confession to Dupin is divided across all eight episodes, providing the core of the miniseries on a macro-narrative level, and justifying its title as well. Episodes 2 through 7 depict the macabre fate that awaited each Usher son or daughter by adapting the cardinal function of a different Poe short story – as the episode titles will reveal below. At the same time, each episode includes flashbacks to the way Roderick and Madeline built their empire. Thus, the main syntax of Flanagan’s The Fall draws its main classes of units from the following seven short Poe stories:

1. “The Fall of the House of Usher,” series title;
2. “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842), title of episode 2;
3. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), title of episode 3;
4. “The Black Cat” (1843), title of episode 4;
5. “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), title of episode 5;
6. “Goldbug” (1843), title of episode 6; and
7. “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1842), title of episode 7.

Thus far, we have established the structural building blocks of Flanagan’s The Fall as an anthology adaptation, assisted by Barthes’s theory of narrative units. The above analysis shows that Flanagan built his eight-hour audiovisual dark history of Madeline and Roderick Usher, their pharmaceutical empire, the morbid destiny of the company’s heirs and heiresses – Roderick’s children – and the eventual demise of the Usher dynasty by focusing on the cardinal functions from seven Poe stories on a macro-narrative level. Pinpointing the main cardinal functions is, therefore, a paramount step in identifying the sources in an anthology adaptation because they construct the foundation of the new narrative. The choice of the seven Poe short stories, and particularly the choice of these Poe stories’ main functions (i.e., the death by a black cat, the death by a device that looks like a pendulum, the death by an animal, and so on) is what makes this particular anthology adaptation what it is. Had Flanagan chosen even a single different Poe story, the artistic result would be a different narrative, inviting perhaps other interpretations, and different critical approaches.

To understand the dynamics of a narrative’s cardinal functions, let us take an example of a recent genre film: Leave the World Behind (2023) is an apocalyptic film which shows a family of four going on a vacation to a rented house in the country, only to find the world is soon coming to an end. This description not only provides the main plot, so that a potential viewer can decide to either view or not view the film, but it also contains the main syntax—the events without which the film would not be the film it is. To be clearer, what is essential in the plot, as far as actions are concerned on a macro-narrative level, is: the existence of a family; the family goes to a rented house in the country; and the family has experiences that point to the end of the world. Without these few main actions, the film would be a different narrative. For instance, the fact that the young daughter sees dozens of deer in the house’s garden — creating an eerie atmosphere and connoting a threat and a warning at the same time— is a cardinal function in the micro-narrative of this specific sequence within the film’s time and space. However, on a macro-narrative level, this event is a catalyzer — an action that assists the realization of the film’s cardinal function, which is the end of the world. Even if the girl’s encounter with the deer were cut or amended by another scene that foreshadows an impending doom, Leave the World Behind would remain an apocalyptic film and could not turn into, let’s say, a social realist narrative or a disaster movie.

Having established the importance of the main cardinal functions, I would be remiss to not add that several other cardinal functions, as well as catalyzers from other Poe stories, have found their way into The Fall episodes on a micro-narrative level. Though these micro-adaptations have significant functions (e.g., ideological, narrative, political), their existence or absence would not alter the main story of the miniseries. However, a proper analysis exceeds the goal and scope of this article and merits a dedicated study.

Continuing with the second class of units, we note that the indices proper that embrace The Fall coincide with the atmosphere of fright, desperation, and agony that pervade most of Poe’s oeuvre. What is more, they are meticulously and successfully offered in an almost flawless audiovisual way. The Fall’s gothic gloom and terror are part of every scene through music composition, sound editing, cinematography, setting, make-up, and special effects. All of these cinematic codes invoke Poe’s work and its era, and are aligned with the fantastic elements of the narrative, the horror genre, as well as the bleak fate of the Usher dynasty.

Finally, most of the informants in the miniseries are drawn from various Poe poems and stories. For example, all of Roderick’s six children are named after various Poe characters: the name of Roderick’s first child, Frederick Usher, comes from Frederick, Baron of Metzengerstein of Poe’s tale “Metzengerstein” (1832); Tamerlane Usher is named after the poem “Tamerlane” (1827); Victorine Lafourcade’s name is found in the story “ The Premature Burial”(1850); Camille L’Espanaye is named after one of the murder victims in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841); Napoleon Usher gets his name from Napoleon Bonaparte Froissart, the narrator of the comic story “The Spectacles” (1850); and the youngest son, the first to die in the miniseries, Prospero Usher, is named after the prince in “ The Masque of the Red Death” (1842). The choice of the names is not random because their miniseries counterparts carry the basic traits of the original characters Poe put to paper. In Flanagan’s miniseries’ progression, Frederick becomes as “heartless, self-willed, and impetuous” (Poe “Metzengerstein”) as he was in the source text, while the young Prospero exhibits the same defiance and arrogance as his royal counterpart (Poe “The Masque”). Nevertheless, the Poe references do not stop here. In what follows, I present a close reading of The Fall’s initial sequence to demonstrate how Flanagan and his artistic team masterfully intertwine several other Poe references with their own vision of the Ushers’ demise, paying tribute to the author and simultaneously establishing an original type of adaptation.

The Fall’s initial sequence, An Ode to Poe

In every The Fall episode, Poe is everywhere and nowhere concurrently – for both the fan/literary aficionado and the non-literary enthusiast. As noted, the titles of episodes 2 through 7 come from the short stories that audiovisually depict the deaths of each of Roderick Usher’s six children. The pilot and the finale differ. Episode 1 is titled “A Midnight Dreary,” which is part of the first lines of Poe’s iconic poem, “The Raven” (1845) and the finale is titled “The Raven.”

The Fall begins with a black screen and the sound of thunder, introducing the viewer to a menacing world. Initially, faint but soon heard clearly, we hear Pink Floyd’s 1979 “Another Brick in the Wall.” A montage of five successive shots separated by flash cuts follows, showing: a “Happy New Year 1980” garland (see Figure 1) across a red brick wall – coinciding with the song’s line “all and all, it’s just another brick in a wall”; a close-up of a raven; a close-up of a woman that looks at the camera and opens her mouth abruptly in a huge, yet, uncanny smile; and a blurry vitro that goes into focus and reveals a Jesus statue in the middle of a church nave. These rapid cuts, along with the images they depict, already foreshadow main events of the story, while the Pink Floyd anthem accentuates, ironically, the secret Madeline and Roderick keep until the finale. Yet, for the first-time viewer, these few images provide —in just under twenty seconds, along with their respective main indices (the editing, the music, the photography, the setting, the characters’ expressions)— the dark atmosphere of the fictional world that is going to be unveiled. Once the shot comes into focus, we hear a preacher’s voice off screen, and the first spoken words are heard: “Thank heaven.” This is followed by a wide establishing shot that orients us in space (see Figure 2).

We are in a church in what seems our contemporary time. On the left, we see the priest, and in the center of the shot we see three caskets with an elegant stand just behind each one, and each holding a blown-up photograph of the dead. The caskets and the rest of the church’s stage are ornated with flowers. Meanwhile, the priest is reciting the first lines from Poe’s poem “For Annie” (1849):

Thank Heaven! the crisis—
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last—
And the fever called “Living”
Is conquered at last. (456).

The recitation continues without pausing, as if the priest is reciting the same hymn, poem, or sermon. Yet, he actually follows the lines from “For Annie” with the second stanza of Poe’s poem “Spirits of the Dead” (1827):

Be silent in that solitude,
Which is not loneliness—for then
The spirits of the dead who stood
In life before thee are again
In death around thee. (72).

The third shot shows Roderick in a medium shot, looking forlorn and despondent, sitting in a pew with no one beside him. He shares the shot with his granddaughter Lenore5 (Kyliegh Curran), who is sitting in the pew behind him, and is out of focus. Lenore is in a black outfit whose style reminds one of the 1850s, which underscores the amount of detail in all aspects of the production. When the preacher utters the words “spirits of the dead,” Roderick sees visions of his six dead children, in the order that they died and at the time of their death. The six insert shots are abrupt, lasting for less than a second, and alternating at intervals that follow the sound of a beating heart —weakly heard alongside the preacher recitation. This type of Eisensteinian metric montage, and especially the use of close-ups of Roderick’s children nearing their final breath, intensifies the narration (Dancyger 18), while also puzzling the viewer and creating anticipation. The next shot introduces Madeline, sitting in the pews opposite Roderick and Lenore, wearing her sunglasses, arm resting on the back of the wooden seat. Her body language does not depict a grieving individual, but rather a person that is, for some reason, obliged to endure a specific engagement. Behind her and out of focus (as is the case with Lenore), we see June (Ruth Codd), Roderick’s second wife. The next shot is of Arthur Pym (Mark Hamill),6 the Ushers’ cunning lawyer, protector, and “handler,” concluding the funeral attendees.

The recitation continues with the final verse of “Spirits of the Dead,” and two more Poe sentences/references: the first comes from “The Premature Burial,” and the second from “The Imp of the Perverse” (1844). In the middle of the first sentence, “The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? (955).” Roderick slowly turns his head and looks up at the Cathedral balcony where he sees a strange woman wearing a black bird masque covering her eyes, standing at the center of the shot in front of the impressive pipe organ (see Figure 3).

Lenore mimics her grandfather’s gesture, but her point-of-view eye-match shot shows an empty balcony. Worried about her “grampus,7” as she affectionately calls her grandpa, Lenore asks him what the matter is, to receive the enigmatic answer: “She’s here." Roderick, resigned, then turns in front of him to listen to the last lines of the preacher’s sermon: “We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss -- we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain” (Poe Imp).” The service ends and Roderick leaves the church alone. A shot of the imposing Gothic cathedral8 (see Figure 4) is followed by various shots of photographs across the street, and Madeline and Pym, standing in front of a line of parked town cars.

The presence of the Usher twins and the family’s tragedies have created a media frenzy. Another rapid montage sequence follows with close-ups of dozens of photographers across the street taking pictures of the remaining Ushers, while the sounds of their cameras’ clicking and shuttering are used as a metronome; every beat reveals photos of all the major characters of the series, as well as newspaper clippings covering the deaths of all Usher descendants. The woeful ambiance is accentuated by the haunting composition by the Newton Brothers, frequent collaborators of Flanagan’s 9. The series’ theme called “At Last” is evocative of the Poe line “And the fever called ‘Living’ is conquered at last” from “From Annie,” whose function is dual: it serves to intensify the emotional aspect of the sequence and it also foreshadows the destiny of untimely deaths that, at last, conquers the Ushers.

The opening sequence seems to end as we enter a new space and, therefore, the next scene; we soon understand that the Usher children’s photos included in the above montage belong to newspaper clippings that are pinned on a cork notice board in Auguste C. Dupin’s office. An officer opens the door and informs Dupin that Roderick Usher himself asked him to visit. Dupin goes to the Ushers’ decaying family home, still owned by Roderick and is soon startled to hear that the man whose pharmaceutical empire he charged with 73 counts of fraud, and other illegal transactions, is ready to confess to all. Roderick begins his account of the Usher empire in 1953, and the flashbacks begin. The pilot ends with the completion of the initial sequence which starts the episode; we return to the funeral once again, and we even rewatch the moment Roderick sees the strange woman and is asked by Lenore if he is all right. This time, however, an addition is made. The priest continues to recite new lines from “The Imp of the Perverse,” accompanied by the same musical theme. Roderick turns his head again up to the balcony. He now sees the ghosts of his six children at the time of their deaths, standing and looking back at him—all bloody, scarred, and disfigured. Roderick is heartbroken as he slowly tries to turn in front of him, and Lenore tries to soothe her grandfather by holding his hand. The sequence returns to Roderick leaving the cathedral alone. As soon as his chauffeur opens the door to his car, the music quiets down, and Roderick sees a jester10 inside looking at him, in one of Flanagan’s trademark jump scares. Visibly distressed, he touches his nose which is bleeding and collapses on the pavement. Panic ensues as his sister rushes over and orders Pym to call an ambulance, and a specific doctor. Meanwhile, a point-of-view shot of Roderick’s, who is lying with his eyes open, reveals a raven perched on the church’s steel railing looking down on him (see Figure 5). Shots alternate between the raven looking down, and Roderick looking up as if there they are communicating. Roderick says, “It’s time,” thrice, with the camera zooming in on his face, and the episode ends abruptly with a loud noise of what seems to be a gate slamming, and the appearance of a black card with the miniseries’ title.

The above close analysis hopefully consolidates the concept of an anthology adaptation and its ability to synthesize a variety of sources by the same author in a constructive way, leading to a coherent new text. Furthermore, the Barthesian classes of units show that even when stories are more focused on psychology, rather than action – that is on indices proper rather than cardinal functions—their audiovisual transposition can be realized in such a way that the result can be intensified and conveyed in a short time. In less than six minutes, The Fall ’s opening sequence immerses us in a gothic-inspired world with uncanny and fantastic elements, presents us with the main characters (and the tragic end of many of them), and makes clear that supernatural creatures are key agents of the truth that Roderick will be confessing to Auguste C. Dupin. Simultaneously, the references to Poe’s oeuvre are carefully embedded in the miniseries, each carrying a specific reason for being there; from the use of specific stanzas in the preacher’s sermon, the musical composition’s title and melody, to the cathedral’s architectural design and Lenore’s outfit. Often, during the analysis, I observed that a single frame or a succession of a few shots provided ample information about the atmosphere of the narrative without a word of dialogue. In other words, where indices proper in literature usually take the form of long descriptive passages to build the necessary ambiance, film and television can make do with one shot that uses a specific colour palette, a specific angle, a few musical notes, and sometimes even the slightest change in a character’s expression to offer the viewer the key to interpretation. I argue that the examination of visual signs (i.e., costumes, lighting) and/or auditory signs (i.e., music, sound effects) is paramount during an adaptation analysis, which frequently neglects those cinematic codes in favor of narrative actions. As Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou points out “Visuality and its role in adaptation studies remains an underexamined area,” as “most analyses focus on narrative and tend to take the visual cosmos created by filmmakers and television productions for granted (“Visuality” 118).”

Moreover, my close reading reveals that the Poe references in Flanagan’s The Fall are not mere decorations and/or easter eggs for viewers, as suggested by media articles.11 Instead, they underscore the care with which each Poe reference in The Fall was used, and the lengths to which the artistic and production teams went to to create a polished, structurally robust and socially pertinent horror narrative based on dozens of Poe’s writings. Further analysis of the pilot, as well as of the rest of the episodes, will show that the selection of Poe references is intentional and adds character traits, psychological information, and actions to serve Flanagan’s vision, and to construct a new narrative about the tragic fate of a dynasty built with the best of intentions.

Conclusions

My first conclusion concerns the birth of anthology adaptations and their association with the modern television landscape. Today’s long-form television narratives are the ideal vehicle to present three-dimensional characters and situations from a variety of perspectives. In other words, a two or even a three-hour film could not easily become an anthology adaptation. However, an almost eight-hour audiovisual narrative such as The Fall can accommodate multiple sources from a single author, paying homage to a literary omnibus (and one that mainly consists of short stories and poems). The combination of a single author’s oeuvre of the past with a personal artistic vision of the present can lead to a narrative that can be watched and enjoyed by fans of the author and by viewers who simply take pleasure in the adaptation’s generic conventions. Thus, anthology adaptations are also the result of the recent multi-platform media arena, its plurality of streaming platforms, the creative freedom it affords artists, and the ability to cater to niche audiences without limiting aesthetic and dramatic visions, while also targeting wide audiences who represent several demographic variables.

This article examined Flanagan's miniseries as a case study to analyze and consolidate the concept of an anthology adaptation, which I argue constitutes a new frontier for adaptation studies in the contemporary media landscape. The weaving of multiple works by a single author, unified into a fresh and innovative audiovisual text marks how the process of adaptation can still evolve and offer novel objects of study. More than thirty Poe publications are woven into The Fall narrative, but the point is not to create a list of references. What Flanagan and his team succeeded in is their amalgamation of Poe’s oeuvre into a contemporary story of corporate and personal greed, entitlement, antagonism, apathy, gender, race, sexuality, and the US opioid crisis. Poe’s work and his frequent troubled heroes, his focus on mental health issues, his affinity for the macabre, the uncanny, and the fantastic gave Flanagan the ideal inspiration to create a story that speaks to some of the most pressing twenty-first century issues. His anthology adaptation is not only new ground for adaptation studies, but it also invites an array of interdisciplinary analyses to examine its many facets, and its importance as a cultural and historical vault of literary and audiovisual dialogue. Hopefully, this article can function as the first step towards this.