The House (2022) - Movie Review

 

Yep, still on an animation kick, and this is a real beauty here. Put onto Netflix back in January, this is a three-part anthology film all about the titular House. This is another situation where the use of stop-motion specifically does a lot for the storytelling all on its own, as putting emphasis on tangible textures and physical objects makes a tighter connection between the audience and the setting that these stories fixate on. It also makes each story’s more horrifying aspects sink in even deeper.

It starts off with a banger in part 1: And heard within, a lie is spun. It involves the construction and first residents of the House, namely young Mabel (Mia Goth) and her parents Penelope (Claudie Blakley) and Raymond (Matthew Goode). The set design is rustic yet regal in showing both their initial home and their new one, and the character designs and even the elemental effects rely on fabric textures for their look. It gives the story this weird kind of approachability at first, like a soft and inviting plushness, which gives way to the story’s own version of body horror as the residents sink further and further into obsession about their new home. Along with abandoning where they once lived.

The importance of place for one’s identity is consistent through all three, but it’s with part 1 that it works the best in my opinion. With the House being described as ‘a shining beacon on the hill’, there’s some immigrant subtext to get out of this in them burning away what and who they once were just to be here, and as it continues to warp the parents’ hopes for a new home, it gets genuinely unsettling. It echoes Vivarium in how it depicts home ownership as its own brand of psycho-horror, which I am definitely living for.

Then it gets to part 2: Then lost is truth that can’t be won, which is the more darkly humourous side of this production. It shifts from fabrics to more of a Wes Andersonian anthropomorphism, right down to a similar dollhouse framing in the cinematography, as we are shifted into modern times with a rat-faced property developer (Jarvis Cocker of Pulp fame) trying to sell the House and having to deal with a major pest problem. It’s certainly the most emphatically British of the three, as well as the most absurdist, what with its sudden swerve into a Busby Berkeley-style dance number that looks like something out of Joe's Apartment. It also shows a descent into obsessive madness, and while it isn’t as unnerving as the first part (save for its quietly tragic ending), it works as a dark parody of the experience of inviting strangers into your own home. Y’know, like if The Open House was actually good.

And then there’s part 3: Listen again and seek the sun, which stands out from the other two for both good and bad reasons. Bad, because with its inclusion of New Age caricatures in Jen (Helena Bonham Carter) and Cosmos (Paul Kaye), it annoyed me far more than the others. But good, because it’s the most hopeful of the three. Where the other two took the idea of “who or what lived here before us?” into more depressing directions, this story of landlord Rosa (Susan Wokoma) focuses on looking forward. Being set in the middle of a Biblical-scale flood (which gives the decision to have all the characters be anthropomorphic cats an enjoyable irony), there’s a definite sense of danger in the atmosphere, but also the need to loosen the hardened ideas we often have about what ‘home’ is. It’s easy to make fun of people who think that healing crystals are the answers to all your problems, but there’s still some merit to be found in not being so tied-down by earthly possessions. I mean, we’ve already seen that drive several people to madness in the last two segments, so maybe they’re onto something.

While I’d argue that the quality of the three shorts isn't too consistent, there’s still a commendable amount of thematic consistency to be found here, both production-wise and in the storytelling. They each deal in the psychological effects of defining the self as where you rest your head at night, and each go into some particularly trippy areas to get that across, aided by some fantastic stop-motion animation. With only a couple exceptions, all the effects work here was done practically, and for a story all about the connections we make with objects and places, it makes the depressing lows and bittersweet highs hit that much harder.