I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House

The curiously titled I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House opened with interesting visuals and fantastic narration, true be told I was gripped from the outset.

It tells the story of a nurse who moves in with an old lady who was once a successful author. To say anything more would spoil it, to say anything more would also be difficult as it's rather hard to explain.

So as mentioned the visuals were great and the narration solid, sadly the visuals don't last and the narration isn't enough to save the film. Not even remotely.

The film is certainly unique but I'm not quite sure who it'll appeal to, certainly not someone seeking a horror. It's an unusual little slow burning tale that had me interested but all the while I waited for it to get going.

Alas the movie though charming fails to deliver on any front, at least for me.

The Good:

Really unique style

Great narration

Bob Balaban

The Bad:

Really dull

Goes nowhere

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Ghosts are made by looking for them but pretending not to see

28yrs old? Hahahahahahahahahahahaha NO!

A young nurse takes care of elderly author who lives in a haunted house.

This film seems to be getting negative responses from people, at least if I take IMDb as any sort of serious guide. At this time (January 2017) it sits at 4.8, which isn't awful but is certainly far from great. Having now seen the film, I find the low rating surprising. The acting is great, and there is nothing wrong with the film as far as technical matters go.

My guess is that people have the wrong mindset. The film was promoted by Rue Morgue, among others, and maybe people got caught up in some hype of Oz Perkins or misunderstood. Much like the recent Guillermo del Toro ghost story, people need to see this type of horror (the "gothic romance") as different from what they expect. It might be slower and there will be less blood. But it is about creating a mood, which I think this film does rather well.

This story had all the makings of a great spooky mystery. Unfortunately, it did not deliver. It starts with very mysterious theories and possibilities. Then, nothing. It's like going to a steak house and eating a salad with tofu.

That's it, it's anemic. It never really tells you why the ghost is there, nor does the ghost appear much.

It needs more interaction between the supernatural and the living. It needs a solution and a reckoning with what happened to the couple that disappeared. In other words, it lacks the very basics of any story: who, why, what when, etc.

I was really looking forward to this movie because I am so sick of all the stupid slasher flicks. Oh well.

Good try.

On its surface, it would be very easy to outright dismiss writer/director Osgood Perkins' atmospheric Gothic-horror picture "I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House." And for good reason. The film is an exercise in deliberation. But it is an exercise that goes too far too often, and suffers for it. Without doubt, most viewers who choose to indulge in viewing it will find their minds wandering and themselves nodding off within the first act because the film's pacing and structure lend to an overpowering sense of tedium and dullness. This is without doubt the very definition of a "slow burn." It both literally and figuratively crawls from scene to scene, with dialog delivered in drawn out whispers and characters moving as if filmed in slow motion at all times. Even as someone with a great bit of patience for films such as this, I found myself checking my phone more times than I'd like to admit.

And yet... I never felt the urge to stop watching. Because despite this glaring issue, the craftsmanship and storytelling is completely enthralling and endlessly engaging, with a grand old-fashioned vibe that I couldn't help but be pulled into from the very first scene. In many ways, it reminded me of the campfire ghost stories of old, classic Hollywood creep-fests of the 50's and 60's and the ancient photographs of ghosts and spirits you stumble across when you research the supernatural. So much of the film is so lovingly assembled to tell a classic tale of the unknown that I couldn't help but watch it start-to-finish... even when it very nearly put me to sleep more than once.

The film follows the tale of a lonely and easily frightened young woman called Lily (Ruth Wilson), who is hired to serve as a live-in caregiver to retired author Iris Blum (Paula Prentiss) in her final years. But as the film informs us through a wonderfully poetic opening narration, Lily's future is a dark one- she tells us that within the year, she will be dead, and we will be witness to the events that lead up to her passing. And the film follows just what happened, as Lily is haunted by strange sounds and visions and begins to suspect that there is something very wrong in the home of Iris Blum. Something that may be connected to her most popular novella- a tale of horror called "The Lady in the Walls."

The strengths of the film lay in Perkins capable hands as a storyteller. The film is absolutely stunning to behold, with an intriguing premise that keeps you thoroughly invested and some of the most gorgeous cinematography in some time, despite the film taking place almost entirely inside of a single house. The expert sense of composition and movement that Perkins excels at builds and maintains a startling and sometimes overwhelming sense of dread and pure guttural terror, and his keen use of carefully calculated jumps will illicit some serious creeps for open minded horror fans. He also wisely keeps the film both focused but also vague, giving it a bit of a mystery flair that will keep you wondering what will come next. And of course, as mentioned before, the dialog and structure of the film is pure poetry. Very classy work.

But it comes at a cost. That being the frankly bizarre sense of pacing that is a result of the calm, calculated storytelling. I hate to say it, but this is a phenomenal short film that is nearly destroyed because it is slowly (and arguably needlessly) dragged to feature length to the point of hilarity and then frustration. There's no good reason this same film could not have been told in a much shorter span of time. A forty minute short-subject with this exact same script and these exact same shots would have been a revelation of pure terror. But padding it out to near ninety minutes is nearly a kiss of death to the entire project. There's only so long you can see Wilson slowly wandering down the hallways moving at a pace of only one step every ten seconds before you feel a yawn arising... only so many times the camera can linger eerily on the same open doorway while slowly zooming in for effect before it starts to feel empty... only so many times you can hear the same droning creaks of floorboards for minutes on end before it loses effect. The pacing is nearly a disaster.

As it stands, it's almost impossible to recommend "I Am the Pretty thing That Lives in the House" to any potential audience. It's beautiful. Stunning even. And a wonderful ghost story told in an unconventional fashion. But it comes at the cost of pacing. I can see too many people being too bored of it to suggest it to anyone outside of the most forgiving of genre fans. But if you prefer and enjoy deliberate horror. If you relish in the slow-burn of features like "The Witch" and "The Shining." You might get something out of it.

I give it an above average 6 out of 10. A beautiful but troubled work of art.

Wow, is this movie ever pretty. Aptly named.

I was captured by the very first scene of the girl in the dress. Like a painting from the futurism style, it blends movement and motion into a final still, out of focus, and it looks stunning on the mostly black big screen. All of this is overlayed with narration that is simply perfectly spoken (which is consistent for the film, a beautiful read), but more importantly beautifully written. The narration, which comprises most of the spoken lines of the film, is more a poem than a movie script, and I appreciated it for it. The image was a painting, the words were literature, as a whole the film was successful as an art piece.

It revolves around a live-in nurse moving into a house to care for an old author who used to write horror books. The nurse starts experiencing subtle signs of a haunting, and finds a strange connection between what is happening to her and one of the author's most famous books.

As an idea, it was the kind of quiet horror I love, channeling fear through the uncanny, like old written weird fiction (my mind took me back to reading the Yellow Wallpaper by Gilman). Fear is not even the right word, as nothing about the film is scary, really. More like a feeling of wrongness with the world, an existential dread of sorts.

Not to detract from the beauty of the art on display, which was anything but shallow, but the plot itself unfortunately was. Pretty, but surface. Only unfinished hints of a story, that relies a bit too heavily on the viewer to fill in the gaps. I am always a fan of ambiguity, and it is almost necessary for me in a horror film (definites tend to disappoint), but there is still a balance to be struck with some concrete details. Osgood Perkins' last film, February, struck the perfect balance between ambiguity and detail, and for that was my favourite horror of 2015. Here, unfortunately, the scale has moved too much in one direction, to the point of feeling unfinished and not entirely satisfying. I also did not love the ending, which is much too close to that of another stunningly subtle recent horror, by one of the most famous current horror directors. Actually, I loved the ending (as a part of the story on display), it fit very well, I just didn't love that I had already seen it so recently. A sad problem of timing.

All in all, I can't possibly not recommend The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, because it is a soul-satisfying kind of pretty, from sound to visuals to acting. But if what you're after is horror (or even a particularly engaging drama), it won't quench that kind of thirst. Only one for beauty.