Netflix’s Typewriter frightens but doesn’t deliver like The Haunting of Hill House

After the success of shows like Stranger Things and The Haunting of Hill House, it seems the time for knockoffs has come. Netflix’s Typewriter brings a few scares to its series but doesn’t reach the level of previous hits.

Last year, a Netflix original took the world by storm. The Haunting of Hill House scared everyone. The creepy long takes, the jump out of your skin moments, and the overall tension in each episode led the show to be rapidly consumed again and again.

Like most great pieces of media, the idea is to mimic the success and replicate the feeling in the product. However, the attempt can’t be too spot on.

Typewriter is an Indian horror series revolving around a group of kids, a haunted mansion, a family secret, and a sarcastic detective all intertwined with a ghost story. A group of children decides to investigate Bardez Villa, a mansion with a notably haunted past, and try to find a ghost. Exactly at that moment, the mansions now-owners decide to move into the home. The mother of this family is revealed to have lived there with her grandfather when these events took place and the mystery begins.

Perhaps the intent was to stride closer to Stranger Things rather than a pure horror series, but the tension in each moment seems to contradict that. While the quality of the show is high as well as the acting, the tone doesn’t deliver. For only five parts totaling less than five hours, it’s an easy watch that doesn’t ask too much. The shortened time may be attributed to the loss of tone, but five more episodes could have added more confusion.

Part of the allure of Stranger Things was its nostalgia for the 1980s and being a kid in that era. The rise of nerdy games, malls, great movies, and going on adventures until dark (and sometimes after). The allure of The Haunting of Hill House was to have the life scared from you and have trouble sleeping. Ghosts are scary.

When a show puts them unexpectedly in moments where the audience knows a ghost is going to be, it makes for a tense viewing environment. Typewriter divides these two sides but doesn’t utilize the good from each.

The children in the series are charming and relatable in so many ways. They are fierce, scared, adventurous, and explicitly aware of their troublemaking. They even have an adorable sidekick. All of these lead to an enjoyable story about these kids and their curiosity, even so far as to add depth by adding in a family tragedy. This may have been the original intent and to have more time to develop these arcs, but it’s not present here.

Netflix has the idea to make as much content as possible in order to compete with the upcoming streaming platforms with every media company. They have to make the content because they’ll lose a majority of their library by 2021.

Shows like Typewriter deserve the opportunity to be made and possibly re-visited time and time again while we mourn the loss of The Office.