ronburgundy
Contributor
It did have potential, but never realized that potential. I was also one of the people who really tried to like it, but just couldn't. There were some interesting moments and cool things, but it mainly went nowhere and every plot twist and reveal made it less interesting than it had been before them.
One of the things that bugged me the most, though, was the girl who was haunting herself. When she died, her spirit went back in time and you saw all the interactions with the ghost from the other side, but then she was a regular ghost after that who had no time travelling ability and was helpful and friendly to everyone instead of scaring and haunting them. Then that one tall ghost apparently had no power over people who weren't afraid of him, but the main evil lady ghost didn't seem to have this restriction. Also, why was the clockmaker ghost there? He didn't seem to be haunting anyone and didn't seem to be particularly tortured or anything else, he just hung out in a hallway playing with a clock.
Basically, they needed to sit down before the show started and decide what a ghost is and what they can do and then have some consistency. Instead, they just rammed a bunch of ghost ideas in all willy-nilly and made half a story with each of them.
I liked the Haunting of Hill House more than most here and thought it was an interesting blend of literal and metaphorical haunting related to childhood tragedy. I have some thoughts on the internal logic of the show that relate to what you saw as problematic, but I'll hide them so to not spoil it for others.
I think the broke-neck girl was never a real ghost. She was a sort of long-con mind fuck created by the house to terrorize the girl and make her fulfill the house's desire for her to kill herself there. That's why she never appeared to anyone else and was gone after the girl actually kills herself and becomes a real ghost. Note that when the oldest son leaves the house for the last time, the broke-neck girl is not among the myriad of ghost standing there. The various ghosts did different things because they were different people. Some were ghosts of bad people who lived there (like the main flapper women ghost), while others were good people (like the mother and daughter), and yet others were just rando people (clock fixer) who died there and ghosts were trapped there but were not there to haunt or terrorize people. The caretaker tells the dad who wants to destroy the house that "this house is full of many things and they don't all belong to you." the he brings his wife into the house to die at the end, so her ghost can be with the ghosts of her children. Basically, the house traps the ghosts of those who die there and itself a supernatural place (the red room), but the ghosts themselves are not all controlled by the house and reflect the people they were.
Overall, I thought the show was pretty good and far better than almost all other haunted house / ghost movies that are only about the terror. It was as much about the familial relations of those metaphorically haunted for decades by their mother's suicide as about the supernatural stuff. In fact, I hoped that it was going to lead toward a reveal or at least suggestion that none of the supernatural stuff was real. I was imagining / hoping that basically, the older brother, despite being an opportunistic asshole peddling ideas he didn't believe in, was correct and the mom went crazy and tried to poison her kids and did poison the neighbor kid then kill herself, and that everything else was the metaphorical haunting of the family as a result. The twins were most impacted b/c they saw their mom kill the kid and they coped by amplifying their childhood fears of ghost in the house so they could pretend that it was all the house that did it. This isn't what the show implies, the haunting is clearly real.