I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House
Long before I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House, My daughter never recovered from her first viewing of The Walking Dead. In her pre-teen days, she ventured into the living room with her best brave face and gave the now iconic apocalyptic zombie show a chance because her best friend loved it. The kids on the bus talked about it. Let’s just say she didn’t survive the episode and to this day she hates zombies.
In some ways the experience scarred our whole family, as vampires, witches and werewolves are a mainstay in this house. The child had watched every episode of all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by the time she reached second grade. Well, except for one. We, as parents, forbid her to watch the episode where Buffy’s mother died. We’d seen her dramatic reaction to parental death many times— The Lion King, The Wild Thornberries Movie, Spiderman.
Our little girl will turn fourteen this summer, so I broached the topic of re-introducing her to horror movies. We tried a year or two ago thinking Joss Whedon might be the key, not only because of the girl child’s fandom of Buffy but also the success of The Avengers. So, Cabin in the Woods seemed perfect. That didn’t go so well either. When I asked her how she would sum up the film, she quickly reminded me that she didn’t watch it.
“But you started it,” I said.
“It was freaky,” she said. “Very freaky.”
For the first time in my life, I scrolled Netflix carefully reading movie ratings and descriptions trying to find the perfect film to spook my daughter but not terrify her. I wanted something current, but not gory, something psychological but not twisted and depraved that would give her nightmares. I decided on the Netflix 2016 film, I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House in part because my husband has wanted to see it. With a rating of TV-14 and a mere 89 minutes long (I hate to sit still), it seemed perfect.
The entire family watched the film, including one very relaxed cat in my daughter’s lap, which proves there was nothing truly frightening about the film, more mild and creepy. Ruth Wilson carries most of the film solo, as a live-in hospice nurse (Lily) tending a retired horror authoress in a haunted house. She fills the majority of the screen time by herself faced with the mysteries of why Ms. Blum, the dying author, calls her Polly and why the house has idiosyncrasies— among them: the drawer that opens, the rug that curls, an odd moldy spot on the wall, a television with “rabbit ear” antenna that usually refuses to work, and an old rotary phone where the cord stretches and recoils from the hand.
The strength of I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House lies in the storytelling. The script is poetic. The scenes carefully, and dare I say, quietly filmed to keep the haunting qualities almost peaceful. The construction of the film reminded me of an Edgar Allan Poe story, each small building block not enough to overwhelm the viewer with emotion but leading to an uncertain end. The nurse, the ghost, the dying author are all victims and perpetrators at the same time.
Is it possible to love the elements of how the story was told, the performance and construction of the characters but yet feel unresolved by the end? That compounds the sensation that the film could have been crafted by Poe. But then, I remembered as we watched the film, I never liked ghost story movies.
And the teen? She considered the most unsettling part of the film the quiet, slow voiceovers delivered by Wilson. It wasn’t as scary as she thought it would be, she reported.
A key element of the success of the film lies in the overlap of time— the nurse looking for answers in the book The Lady in the Walls as written by the author in her younger days and the presentation of various time periods and how they contributed to what occurs in the present. The story starts with the origin of the house. The author seems to have recorded the events of that construction with her book. Yet, the author is too old to reveal the truth behind the manuscript so Lily, the nurse, plays detective. That plot device held the teen’s attention.
I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House certainly served its purpose, to introduce the teen to movies that focus on a more cerebral approach and to ask questions more than promote gore and fear. Hopefully, we can watch more movies soon.
The Plot Sickens: Also for “Women in Horror Month,” don’t miss Susan Leighton’s piece on Deborah Foreman!
Crash Palace Support Team
Angel Ackerman and Eva Parry
After a fifteen-year career in print journalism, Angel Ackerman has studied world history, (specifically post-colonial Francophone Africa, Muslim relations, and contemporary Western politics) and traveled several continents. Her recent publications include the poem This Paris in StepAway magazine, an essay on the weather and travel on the Horn of Africa in Rum Punch Press, academic encyclopedia entries on Djibouti, a review in Global Studies South on a book examining famine in Somalia, book reviews from eons ago for Hippocampus Magazine and an upcoming essay on chickens. Follow her on Twitter.
Eva Parry will enter high school this fall but has already spent a season in the low brass section of the marching band carrying a sousaphone. When not irritating her mother by piling as many clothes and candy wrappers as possible on her bedroom floor, she explores various writing forms and antagonizes her cats. She has known Billy Crash most of her life and never stops making noise or talking, which once resulted in her missing a catch in a game of Frisbee and taking a Frisbee in the mouth.
(Photo of I am the Pretty Thing that Lives In the House from Netflix.)