Netflix And Chill: I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House (2016)

Oz Perkins has now made three movies, one of which I have yet to see. His directorial debut, February AKA The Blackcoat's Daughter, is one that many people stumbled across, only to find that they were very impressed by it. It was an atmospheric work, one that jumped around time and space, piecing together a puzzle that revealed a spooky and sad picture.

I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House is another atmospheric work, and also jumps around time and space, AND ALSO pieces together a puzzle that reveals a spooky and sad picture. It shows Perkins to be more confident in his abilities, and more confident in the patience and abilities of anyone viewing his film.

Ruth Wilson plays Lily, a nurse who ends up working in the home of Iris Blum (Paula Prentiss). Iris has written some enjoyably creepy work, but Lily doesn't normally read such stuff. She's too easily scared. But she decides to check out something that Iris wrote, something that she thinks may be tied to the real history of the house in which she has found herself.

Dark and oppressive, yet also light (thanks to the nature of the lead character), I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House is a traditional ghost story in almost every sense, apart from the way in which certain scenes are lined up alongside one another. It's all very much on a par with the kind of atmospheric tales you know and love from Henry James and Shirley Jackson, but Perkins also does himself a favour by not including absolutely every trope and creaky door you might expect.

Wilson gives one of her best performances in the main role, and she never really does less than very good indeed in her work. She's there to do a job, to care for someone who has nobody else at her side, and she often walks through the house like some kind of illuminated will-o'-the-wisp. Prentiss has a lot less to do, the film belongs largely to Wilson and Lucy Boynton (playing Polly, another young woman who is inextricably linked to the house), but does just fine.

Perkins has a great knack for taking the elements of a particular subgenre and reshuffling them in a way that allows his films to feel both fresh and veritably overflowing with blood drained from many tales that have been told before. Perhaps not the best kind of film for those who have enjoyed some mainstream bumps and jumps, this should still strike a chord with horror fans who can enjoy a modern spin on some gothic melodrama and tragedy.

Beautifully constructed, nicely scored (by Elvis Perkins), perfectly cast (there's even a nice small role for Bob Balaban), and effectively spooky, this deserves to be seen and appreciated by patient viewers.

8/10

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Shudder Saturday: The Girl In The Photographs (2015)

Although not all horror movies need to fit nicely into a narrowly-defined genre pigeonhole, some films seem to make their biggest mistake in being far too non-committal to the genre. They want to be a thriller, or they want to be too funny, or they want to concentrate on some more serious dramatic elements. None of these things are wrong, depending on your movie, but they feel wrong when placed in a horror movie framework that you think has been reluctantly chosen by a director who couldn't figure out another approach.

The Girl In The Photographs is one of those movies. It's a thriller, for the most part, and a fairly standard one, but you get a bit more nastiness here and some gore in the finale. It's not enough, however, to distract you from the weak script, lack of logic, and poor acting from almost everyone involved (including/especially Kal Penn).

The standard plot sees a young woman (Colleen, played by Claudia Lee) targeted by some sick kidnappers/killers. They keep leaving her photos of their latest victim, photos that somehow show things clearly enough to be upsetting without giving away anything that could help the police. An arrogant photographer (Peter Hemmings, played by Penn) finds out about this, assumes that the psycho is homaging his work, and decides to head back to his home town, thinking he may lure the killer out and solve the case (yes, the plan is as dumb as it sounds).

Nick Simon doesn't have too many features to his credit, as director, but perhaps the most telling thing about his filmography is the fact that 2 Lava 2 Lantula! seems to be one of his better outings. He also helped write this script, alongside Oz Perkins and Robert Morast, and it's worth wondering just how well this could have turned out if it had been shaped by the singular, and more assured, vision of Perkins (who has built up a small, but acclaimed, filmography that has him marked out as a not-inconsiderable talent). From the character moments to the tonal slides, this film is one hell of a mess. Some people will still be able to enjoy it, messiness and all. I did not.

The performances really don't help either. Lee isn't too bad in her role, and there are some okay supporting turns here and there, but it's the bigger names who throw the film further out of balance. As much as I tend to like him onscreen, Penn is giving the worst performance I have ever seen from him here. He's a mix of Austin Powers (in standard photographer mode) and whoever you have met in your life that turned out to be the most irritating asshole you never wanted to meet again. Katharine Isabelle is onscreen just enough to remind you of how wonderful she is, and how the film would be much better if she was in the lead role (no offence intended to Lee, it's just . . . Katharine Isabelle), and Mitch Pileggi feels like he's only cast to make viewers go "do I know him? I think I know him, oh wait, that's him from The X-Files, isn't it?" That may seem unfair to Pileggi, who is just a working actor keeping himself in work, but his role feels just a bit too minor for him to be in it, which is what makes it feel even more like a simple case of distracting stunt casting.

I was almost more generous here with my rating, considering the things that seem perfectly okay, on a technical level, but the more I thought about it, the more I found to dislike. I don't want to mention the other performances, that range from the bland to the awful. I don't want to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who acts as if they were too worried about making an outright horror movie while being too inexperienced to make a cracking thriller. And I don't want to spend more time on a movie that felt like a waste of 95 minutes already.

3/10

The movie is currently available on Shudder, but I'd recommend picking something else on there instead.