THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE Had an Alternate Ending That Was Darker and More Depressing

One of the things that I loved about The Haunting of Hill House was that after it takes you through this truly horrific and nightmarish journey, it actually has a happy feel-good redeemable ending.

Not all horror films have to have jacked-up ending that that leave audiences feeling like shit afterwards. Horror films can have happy ends too!

Well, there was a very bleak and more depressing ending for The Haunting of Hill House that was considered. This ending definitely would have changed the way the show was received by audiences.

If you haven’t made it to the end of the show yet:

In the final episode of the series we see the members of the Crain Family become trapped in Hill House. We learn that after years of thinking they were never able to get into the Red Room, they actually spent a lot of time in the room, but never realized it. The room would pretty morph into whatever is that the Crain kids wanted it to be. Some of those things included a treehouse, a dance studio, a family room, etc.

There is one constant visual clue that lets you know that the kids were in the Red Room. There was a distinct rectangular window in the background.

The series ends with the surviving Crain Family managing to escape from Hill House and we see a montage of the Crain family recovering from their nightmarish experience at the house, and at one point we see Luke Crain surrounded by his family celebrating two years of sobriety.

Well, this is where director Mike Flanagan would have put the dark twist in. When talking to Thrillist, he explained that in the place of the framed paining in the background they almost put in that rectangular window from the Red Room:

“One thing I can say is that we talked for a very, very long time about putting the Red Room window, that weird vertical window, in the background of this shot. And I ultimately decided not to. It was too cruel. But there was a lot of talk that this peace might not be real. In the version we ended up going with, I think it absolutely is real. We committed to that course of action.”

If they did end the series like this, it would have meant that the Crain family never escaped the house, that they were still trapped in there living in a delusional state. That would have been such a wrenching ending! But, thankfully they didn’t go that route.

What do you think of the alternate ending? Would you have liked to see the alternate darker ending or are you happy with the ending we got?