Sure, the bad ones are often about jump scares and poor CGI, but we fear haunted houses because they remind us of mortality and force us to question that which we know about it. “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House” isn’t about ghosts as much as it’s about death—the one coming soon for the homeowner, the one of the protagonist in her book, the one we’re told is coming for its protagonist. And all of these deaths swirl around to the point that they hang in the air, creating dread. From the very beginning of his sophomore film (his even-better “February” aka “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” has lingered in distribution purgatory but should be released next year), Perkins is playing with perspective and atmosphere. For example, when we meet Lily, it is on her first day in the house.
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With her mind now clouded by dementia, Iris insists on calling her new nurse Polly, mistaking Lily for her most famous literary creation. Already highly strung, Lily increasingly falls prey to scary noises and visions as she creeps around this creaky old house, which seems to be haunted by the ghostly bride (Lucy Boynton). The lapse in coverage on it may come from Netflix's inability to promote its Originals, with niche art house films like this one getting buried beneath the never-ending barrage of new content. Or maybe it's because this ghost story is often categorized as a horror movie, but better suited to suspense lovers. Perhaps it's the sentence-long title which, while intriguing, is not very search friendly.
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It is one of the few things in this film of which we can be certain. We meet protagonist Lily Saylor (Ruth Wilson), a live-in nurse, on the day she moves into elderly horror author Iris Blum's (Paula Prentiss) house to take care of her. But as she says, "A house with a death in it can never again be bought or sold by the living. It can only be borrowed from the ghosts that have stayed behind."
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'I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House' Director Osgood Perkins on His Haunted New Horror Movie That's ... - Yahoo Entertainment
'I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House' Director Osgood Perkins on His Haunted New Horror Movie That's ....
Posted: Fri, 28 Oct 2016 07:00:00 GMT [source]
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House is a lightly gothic murder ballad made with great finesse and a fine cast, including a rare appearance by semi-retired screen veteran Paula Prentiss. Proving February was no fluke, Perkins has made a vintage haunted-house thriller that owes more to the creeping dread of Polanski, Kubrick or Lynch than to more bloodthirsty recent subgenres of horror. It may ultimately impress more with its brooding literary atmosphere than with its familiar narrative ingredients, but this crisp little mood piece still jangles the nerves.
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Several days after, Mr. Waxcap discovers Lily's and Iris's bodies. Years later, a new family has moved into the house, watched over by Lily's ghost. Iris angrily explains that Polly betrayed and abandoned her, and reminds her that even the prettiest of things eventually rot.
Throughout, Perkins subverts the male gaze and its uncomfortable relationship between pretty female "things" and cameras. Again and again, we are shown seductively beautiful and disturbingly immaculate images of feminine beauty. The camera fixates on them -- until the pretty thing turns her head to face us head-on, her unwavering gaze of defiance, sadness, or fear somehow implicating the audience in her distress. What was an object of desire suddenly becomes a subject of undefinable depth.
Ultimately though, a solid paranormal tale requires a strong backbone, or in the very least a plucky protagonist. That’s where I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House falls woefully short. A Golden Globe-winning Brit, Wilson (The Affair, Luther) handles her debut leading role with aplomb, couching her credible American accent in nervy mannerisms that speak volumes about Lily’s brittle, paranoid nature.
Ms. Blum cannot see Polly’s ending because Polly cannot see it, and she sees Lily as the closest she can get. Despite Lily’s angry insistence on her identity, she becomes a conduit between the dying and the dead for Ms. Blum through this manifestation of Polly. His father was the late, great actor and sometime director Anthony Perkins, the man whose turn as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (and its three direct sequels) continues to chill the blood.
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There is nothing that chains them to where their bodies have fallen. But still they confine themselves, held in place by their looking. Wilson is a beguiling presence whose large, expressive eyes are a horror director’s dream. But save for a final primal scream, she’s never afforded the chance to cut loose and show off her chops. Straight out of the gate, Perkins announces he’s not out to surprise, instead relying on atmosphere to keep you invested. He and his gifted cinematographer Julie Kirkwood do a bang-up job of capturing every foreboding shadow in the isolated country manor where the entire film is set.
In 1812, Polly, wearing a wedding dress and black blindfold, walks through the empty house under the watchful eye of her husband. In this way, Lily becomes a medium for the fluidity of life and death in the house. In two especially strange and unexplained scenes featuring Lily’s voiceover, she is shown in a blurred, high contrast black-and-white image, and something appears to be coming out of her mouth.
For the rest of film, she simply creeps around the house at a glacial pace, trying to find out why Iris keeps calling her Polly, the name of the doomed heroine in her novel, The Lady in the Walls. With its female-driven narrative, its irony-free faith in vintage horror tropes, and its unspecified but minutely detailed retro setting, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House is a stylistic sister film to February. Cinematographer Julie Kirkwood deserves special mention for her command of uncanny mood shifts, conjuring up maximum unease with glacially slow zooms into deep shadow, light-footed prowling and precisely framed interior shots. Another returnee is musician Elvis Perkins, the director’s brother, who amps up the suspense with off-key pianos, ominous drones and slithering soundscapes full of phantom menace. I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House is a 2016 gothic supernatural horror film written and directed by Osgood Perkins.
We rank every one of the British director's movies by Metascore, from his debut Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels to his brand new film, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. For whatever reason, you've missed out on one of Netflix's most daring experiments, and one of the most evocative atmospheric horror films exploring the female psyche since Polanksi's Repulsion. Often, each woman looks directly into the camera, reversing the inherent voyeurism of watching a film.
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House had premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2016, and was released worldwide on Netflix on October 28. The film received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics, who praised its atmosphere and cinematography, but criticized its screenplay, slow pacing and failure to explain the plot. No one has seen this ghost except the viewer, not even Ms. Blum. We see it creeping around the house just as we see Lily creeping around the house. In the final confrontation, Lily turns around and looks at us, the viewer, and gasps. The camera cuts to a closeup of an eye showing Polly’s reflection.
It was later renamed The Blackcoat’s Daughter, and is finally set to make its long-delayed U.S. debut next year. In the meantime, Netflix have commissioned this classy sophomore effort from Perkins. Lily has come to this home to take care of an elderly woman named Iris Blum. In a very unspecified time period (although phones are rotary, televisions have rabbit ears, and we see VHS tapes for video and cassette tapes for audio), Lily starts freaking out about the “creepy” old house on night one.
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