I've only watched two episodes so far and it hasn't been very scary. It's similar in tone to castle rock except it has a more coherent story.

It gets a bit creepy at times, and has a couple of jump scares. Overall, I enjoyed it, but wasn't all that scared of it. I liked the approach of different viewpoints of the same event each episode.

@Gus Gorman said:

I don't want to invest my time in it if it's not gonna scare me.

Richard P. is that you?

I would call this creepy in parts more than scary. The scares are more about character-driven drama (i.e. real-life scares), but I found them quite effective, and there are definitely moments of supernatural eerieness that could get under your skin. But is it scary? Not really. This isn't about jump scares, which I often find boring and shallow anyway, to be honest. I personally liked it quite a bit. Episode 5 is the best in the season, with an ending that will haunt you even if you see it coming (which you might if you allow yourself to be invested in the story and characters). There is quite a bit of character-driven moments, however, and if you're not fond of developed conversations between characters you might get bored with it. Although I very much liked the series, it kind of whimpers out in the second half. It could have been reduced to 8 episodes from 10 and been paced more tightly.

I got through most of the first two episodes and I find it pretty bad. It gets better? Got to the kitten part that was just stupid...

Yeah, it gets much better. It's pretty slow the first 4 episodes then starts getting crazy around episode 5 as another poster pointed out. I finished episode 8 last night and it's getting a little unnerving. I'm interested to see what the next two episodes offer and if it will give an explanation as to what is causing all of this madness in the house.

Got bored of the whole damn thing. Ended up skimming trough the last 5 episodes.

I finished it today. I thought the last episode was kind of town but I did enjoy episodes 5-9. Definitely not scary though.

Im glad I'm sticking with it. Really warmed up to it. Gets better after a rocky start (which was probably done to lay ground work for later episodes, but still unless you're binging the first two episodes are downright bad).

@felixxx999 said:

I got through most of the first two episodes and I find it pretty bad. It gets better? Got to the kitten part that was just stupid...

Far better that pretty much all of the recent box office "horror", IMHO.

Scary moments for sure. Feelings of dread and anxious moments abound. Some legit creepy ghostly moments. It does fizzle out in the end, unfortunately.

It's not scary, sorry to say.

Whoever designed the FX that were meant to be frightening failed. I considered giving up after the third episode but watched the entire series only because I'm inclined to finish what I've started. This show was way, WAY too long; the dysfunctional family theme quickly became boring and tedious, and the ending was plain awful. Hill House is one of the most infamously-scary places in literature and film - but not in this show!

The various bedroom scenes were scary. Lots of anxiety. I was nervous every time there was a sleepy scene. merryapril must live with ghosts and is used to them popping into existence from time to time. I do agree that the ending was kinda bad, however.

IMO we've become so inured to zombie-themed entertainments that the sight of human putrefaction just isn't very scary anymore. So I thought the FX, most of which were bodies in varying degrees of decomposition, weren't very effective. Perhaps if more would've been left to the imagination, like via creepier sounds or the fainter manifestation of ghostly phenomena -- as is the case IRL hauntings -- it would've been more frightening.

Kewl Kat, I guess your spine tingles more easily than mine!

@Gus Gorman said:

I don't want to invest my time in it if it's not gonna scare me.

If you're easily scared it might.

I finally got around to seeing this and overall I liked it with episodes 5 and 6 being the best, but as others have stated it really does drop the ball in the finale. Without mentioning spoilers I'll just say the house loses all of its menace in the end. And not that I need a long drawn out explanation as to why the house does what it does but no one even asks, the guy writing the book seems to have done zero research into the history of the house and who owned it or how many people linked to the house died under mysterious circumstances.

If they do a second season I'd love to see the B story set far in the past that gets into the history of the house.

@nolesjs17 said:

I've only watched two episodes so far and it hasn't been very scary. It's similar in tone to castle rock except it has a more coherent story.

I am coming up on ep four and I thought the same thing... Stephen King influence. Or maybe Shirley Jackson's original book influenced him? I have never read it though I should since I love the first film made from it "The Haunting".

So far it is not scary in the least. The kitten business was a bit gross and unnerving but nothing has risen to the level of what some articles stated that people had to leave the room or actually vomited. Maybe I am too horror jaded? Or maybe later on?

My issue has been keeping everyone straight! The daughters all look alike, the kids playing them look alike, which isn't odd them being sisters but in the telling of the story I was so far at times not sure if I was watching Shirley or Theo. Hope I have it down now.