Haunted Houses

minimalist architecture has a lot of sharp corners

When I first started watching “The Girl Before” on HBO, I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief. The new series, starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Jessica Plummer, and Daniel Oyelowo is about a high-end minimalist smart house that one can rent in the middle of London for far below market rate, should you answer an intimate questionnaire properly, get through a strange interview with the architect, and abide by a series of stringent rules (no clothes on the floor, no children, no coasters, no knick-knacks). When Jane (Mbatha-Raw) tours the house, she is told that no one has lived there in three years because although they have many applicants, no one has lived up to the exacting standards of the architect, Edward (Oyelowo). I know London real estate can be rather trying, and the house is beautiful in a queer brutal way, but come on - who is taking this bargain? Have they not seen the seminal 1999 Disney Channel classic Smart House, in which the house inevitably takes over and makes its occupants’ lives a living hell? But as the series progressed, I began to glimpse what I had first missed. This is a haunted house story; when you’re offered the tenancy of a haunted house you accept because something in it has already sunk its claws into you. Whether it’s a neogothic pile with a fireplace big enough to roast you whole or a streamlined concrete and glass box, any house can be haunted.

So first, to watch this show, you have to turn on your willing suspension of disbelief. The house, the rules, Edward, the “smart housekeeper,” the building’s past, the fact that Edward is absolutely watching these women in the house (and they should for sure know that because duh) - it’s all creepy. But in order to tell this story, you have to get the hero or heroine to move into the haunted house; only once they’ve accepted this lugubrious hero’s journey can the psychological mayhem begin.

The series moves along two timelines, one when Emma (Plummer) moves into the house and the second three years later when Jane becomes the next occupant. Emma and Jane are physically nearly identical and their experiences with the house begin to mirror each other. To make matters worse, Edward’s deceased wife looked quite a bit like them as well. Soon after each of the women moves in, Edward begins dating them according to his exacting program. He buys each of them the same dress to wear on their first date, cooks them the same meal, takes them to the same church (ostensibly to show them one of his favorite buildings, but it is also the church where he married his wife). Emma soon discovers both that she looks like the dead wife and that the wife is buried under the house. Of course she is. In Jane’s timeline, she discovers that Emma is dead and that she died after falling down the stairs in the house. Of course she did.

This all sounds a bit much, doesn’t it? It is a bit much! It’s a gothic romance disguised as a prestige HBO mystery. The form of the series is as deceptive as the house it mirrors. It may feel elegant and streamlined, but don’t be fooled; it is firmly in the same tradition as The Castle of Otranto, Jane Eyre, and The Haunting of Hill House. The series sings with gothic tropes; the rule of threes, the brooding lover, the doppelganger, the dollhouse, the mask, the ghost in the machine. Siri may be the ghost and there may not be a turret or a battlement in sight, but there’s a madwoman in this proverbial attic, make no mistake.

Gothic novels trade in secrets and generational trauma. Long before the field of psychology emerged, the gothic asserted that the secrets we hide subconsciously impact our actions, affect our children, and trap us in unhealthy cycles. In Jane Eyre, Mr. (Edward) Rochester hides his mad first wife in the attic while courting his second wife, but no matter how much he tries to hide his secret, it continues to come out at night, creep down the halls, and poison his new relationship. In Edgar Allen Poe’s gothic tales, murderers are haunted by their deeds through the uncanny glances of knowing cats and the unmistakable sound of hearts beating under floorboards. You can never bury anything, be it a body or a secret, in a gothic tale. It always finds a way to come back.

In “The Girl Before,” secrets take the form of textbook female violations. Both Emma and Jane have been subjected to horrifying treatment at the hands of various institutions. In Emma’s case, it is the criminal justice system that retraumatizes her as she attempts to grapple with being raped; in Jane’s case, it is the medical establishment that refuses to admit fault in the stillbirth of her daughter. For Emma, the secrets she keeps and a lack of support from either institutions or friends make her vulnerable to the predations of Edward the obsessive, controlling architect. Edward is brooding and exacting and when crossed, becomes violent. One of the series’ weaknesses is that although Emma’s motivations for dating Edward are clear and somewhat believable - she actually takes comfort in the opportunity to escape from herself and her secrets and pretend she can be the metaphorical reincarnation of Edward’s perfect wife Elizabeth - this is not the case with Jane. Jane and Emma may look alike, but they are very different. Emma is playful, chaotic, immature; Jane is orderly, austere, mature. It is difficult to buy that Jane would be interested in Edward and even more difficult to buy she would continue seeing him once she becomes aware of his history with Emma (some advice for the girls: if he buys you the same necklace he gave his dead lover, run far away).

The series is an odd blend. The plot is unbelievable in the extreme, especially in the last act when all is revealed, but it’s deliciously eery in parts. The characters are well-drawn and excellently acted by our main trio, but the side characters are all paper-thin caricatures who mainly exist to tell the two women they shouldn’t be living in the house or dating Edward. The best aspect, of course, remains the house. The atmosphere within that house is equal parts lovely and sinister. Every corner is hard granite. I was always expecting Jane or Emma to stub a toe or catch the edge of the countertop on their hip. This is a house that bruises you. This is a house an obsessive sociopath poured his heart into; it’s baked into the foundations. Just look at those rules; no children, no knick-knacks, and worst of all, no books.