Imagine a Wes Anderson stop motion animated film but take out the irreverence and cheekiness then add in serious nightmare tendencies and you get The House. Three different directors take us inside one single house in different eras to bring us on a surprisingly disturbing journey that finds quite humerous moments in the horror as well as a strikingly hopeful ending.
The House is quite beautiful. It uses real stop motion animation and beautifully designed puppets and sets that bely the story's underlying darkness with a beauty or perhaps a cuteness that makes the film both more shocking in how upsetting it can be but at the same time wields a softer blow, perhaps gently terrifying us. The film never explains why it sometimes uses human characters and sometimes uses anthropomorphic animal characters but as the stories progress the world of The House just becomes more and more organic and gets more and more under your skin.
By the time the film was reaching its conclusion I had already been convinced of its bleakness. So the film's hopeful and liberating ending was even more powerful than it might have been otherwise. There is an idea implanted in all the frustration and fear of these tales that one can find a way out. But even with this, The House is haunting no doubt, compelling for sure, and a thing of macabre beauty.
The House
Starring: Claudie Blakely, Matthew Goode, Mia Goth, Miranda Richardson, Jarvis Cocker, Yvonne Lombard, Sven Wollter, Susan Wokoma, Helena Bonham Carter, Paul Kaye, Will Sharpe
Directors: Emma de Swaef & Marc James Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Paloma Baeza
Writers: Enda Walsh
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