Directed by Osgood Perkins
Starring Ruth Wilson, Paula Prentiss, Bob Balaban and Lucy Boynton
Kids, this is one of those films that is very difficult to review. Why? Because...there's nothing. And I actually mean that as a compliment.
Seriously, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (and I'm going to try to keep mentioning that title to a minimum, because typing it is a pain in the ass) is one of the most low-key and downright MINIMAL films I've ever seen. I've seen Roger Corman flicks that contain something like seven spears and five loincloths and manage to recreate the Roman empire, and this one has it beat. See those four actors listed above? They're pretty much the only people in this movie, but it's not just volume that we're talking about here. It's everything. Thus, if you want to see Lick Ness Monster play mental gymnastics, this is the review for you.
Just released on Netflix, this film (1-for-1 on not typing that title again!) is the brainchild of Osgood Perkins, son of legendary actor and Norman Bates himself Anthony Perkins. He's directed a couple other movies, but I haven't seen nor even heard of them, so I'm not going to italicize them. You know...Osgood. Now that's a name that seriously needs to make a comeback. If we had more Osgoods running around, I dare say that the world might just be a much more happy place. And now I'm just talking out of my ass to prolong this paragraph. So Osgood wrote this movie as well, and I've got to commend the guy, because this script couldn't have been any more than like 40 pages and he managed to get 90 full minutes out of it. A classic example of the "less is more" concept that gives me a half chub if there ever was one...so, let's delve into the dark, slow, and slightly impenetrable world of I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (that's two).
Stripped down to its barest essentials, the film is essentially a haunted house story. A live-in nurse named Lily (Ruth Wilson) has just arrived at a rather sprawling residence to serve as the hospice care for aging horror novelist Iris Blum (Paula Prentiss, a former friend of Osgood's late father who came out of semi-retirement to do this mostly silent role). See that last sentence? That's almost all of the plot we get for the vast majority of the running time. In this case, it's all in the spice and the presentation. Fortunately, I can report that these are areas where Osgood really excels, along with the talent of his actors.
It's a good thing. Keeping with the minimalism theme, the movie is also VERY sparse on both dialogue and background music. If memory serves correctly, I can actually NAME the scenes that contain dialogue. There's a bit early on where Lily calls one of her friends after arriving at the house while the camera conveys to the audience that something horrible is just out of frame. There's the scene where Mr. Dalrymple from Seinfeld shows up as Lily's boss to give us all the exposition we need involving Iris Blum's most famous novel that may or may not be about the house's original residents. And there's Lily's narration as she goes about reading the novel...or trying to.
See, Lily is kind of a wuss. Her defining character trait is that she's skittish and afraid of everything. The book in question is her Pandora's box, because she believes it to be connected to the strange noises that she hears at night in the house. Why? The earlier exposition involving Mr. Dalrymple, that' why, who explained that Iris explained that she wrote the novel not as fiction, but as it was dictated to her by a ghost that lived in the house. And I think you know where it's going from here, especially since we'd seen some creepy flashback scenes earlier involving the original owners of the house. What this film lacks in originality, though, it more than makes up for in execution and the tour-de-force performance from Wilson.
Quick side story: when I was a little bastard (like, 10 years old), I wrote a horror story for one of those "short story" assignments in school called "Fear of Blood" about a kid who finds himself facing off with a psycho killer. The TWIST PART (proving that I, Jon Lickness, gave M. Night Shyamalan everything he knows) was that said kid had a crippling fear of cuts and blood. Amazing writing, I know. I even drew a title page for the story with big block letters dripping blood that probably got me more than one mention to the school doctor. I mention this story because I wish this was a plot device used more in horror films - either a specific fear or a non-specific one that a character has to deal with in addition to the external threats, because it does WONDERS in getting us into a character. Wilson does a fantastic job playing a scaredy cat, and because of this, we're fully in her corner. +2 cool points.
So it goes with this movie. Lily is able to read the book in roughly one-page increments, and, bit-by-bit, the haunting becomes more bold and pronounced. It avoids the cliches of every other haunted house movie where the ghost starts to specifically target our heroine - it really does seem like we're dealing with your garden variety residual haunting (google that term if you're not a paranormal aficionado like me) in this movie instead of a malevolent one. A lot of it is really clever, well-shot, and achingly tense. And then the ending hits, one that is horrifying but left a sour taste in my mouth.
As usual, it's probably just a case of me being a moron. I'm sure that a film critic who knows their movies will tell you that the ending of this flick is all kinds of poetic, unexpected and awesome, and they're probably right. And...I really don't know what I expected or how I would do things differently. But I just wanted something different from what we got. No spoilers here, and your mileage might vary. The flick is easily viewed on Netflix for anyone interested, and it's something that I would actually heartily recommend despite how much I disliked the ending, because there's plenty to admire about this film. There's atmosphere, there's creepiness in spades, and there's Ruth Wilson, who I really hope to see more from in the immediate future, because she's dynamite.
*** out of ****. Check this one out, because it's creative, original and actually genuinely SCARY. But...that ending. Man.
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