The House review: an unsettling stop-motion anthology on Netflix

Table Of Content

• Film Credits
• Expand film menu
• Now You See Me 3: Rosamund Pike Joins Cast for New Sequel
• Nicole Kidman’s Daughters Make Their Red Carpet Debut at AFI Life Achievement Award Gala
• What Happened To Asunta Fong Yang?
• Australia’s Senior Managers Present ‘Michael’s Rule’ to Help Promote Local Music
• Rosamund Pike Joins ‘Now You See Me 3’

Their spooky period piece, about a family who sells their humble abode to a mysterious architect in exchange for a lavish residence, chronicles how the surreal place transforms the behavior of their felt protagonists. To Walsh, his writing for “The House” relied on specific qualities distinct to each filmmaker. In Lindroth von Bahr’s talking animals he found the dry humor of Roy Andersson, while he believes Baeza’s strength is in having a great dramatic attunement to the small details that comprise her characters. The third story had the most hope, even though it describes a very plausible environmental disaster. It’s not a coincidence that it has the most complete story and the best performances.

Film Credits

Husband and wife are so enchanted by their new possessions—a magnificent fireplace, electric light bulbs, fine fabrics—they completely ignore their two children, Mabel (voiced by Mia Goth) and the baby Isobel. I won’t spoil the story’s ending, but it comes with a macabre, Edgar Allen Poe-esque twist to ensure they pay for their sins. All the while, you get caught up in the world, but you’ll be reminded of the artistic achievement with wide shots that reveal an elaborate diorama, like a scene where Raymond watches from the window while his old home is torn down.

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Maybe it isn’t saying much to note that Netflix’s stop-motion film The House features the most disturbing, skin-crawling, stomach-flipping vermin-based musical number since the 2019 CG-fest Cats. But it should count for something that this collection of three weird animated stories is so capable of unnerving an audience with something so gleeful and playful. The film isn’t traditional horror, but it has deep-rooted horror elements that may creep up on viewers, just like those dancing parasites do. Raymond’s wife Penny (Claudie Blakey) is hesitant at first, but she quickly gets on board when she sees the house comes with a top-of-the-line sewing machine.

Now You See Me 3: Rosamund Pike Joins Cast for New Sequel

The night before her death on September 21, 2013, Asunta and her mother ate lunch at her father’s apartment, played a game of cards, and watched an episode of The Simpsons. She spent two nights in a private psychiatric hospital where she said she felt suicidal, apathetic, and guilty. Porto discharged herself after two days and only returned for one of the regular checkups scheduled, per The Guardian.

Nicole Kidman’s Daughters Make Their Red Carpet Debut at AFI Life Achievement Award Gala

“The idea was that the viewer would recognize the house every time, with the sensation that they’ve been there before, which was really important to us,” said Bavasso. From the genesis of the project, it was clear that the goal was not to homogenize the artist’s unique traits. They weren’t asked to make their styles look alike, but rather encouraged to embrace their individually. At the same time, it was crucial that once assembled, the pieces constituted a cohesive whole—at least from a psychological standpoint.

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What Happened To Asunta Fong Yang?

Set in a reality where mice exist like humans in contemporary times, a financially strapped house flipper takes on the home as a means to dig himself out of debt. Taking on the work himself, he makes everything look beautiful on the outside, but battles an infestation of pests that threaten to ruin his whole endeavor. It’s by far the most surreal of the three stories, even featuring a Cecil B. DeMille-style insect musical that is equal parts hysterical and horrific if you have any aversion to creepy crawlies.

Segment I: “And Heard Within a Lie Is Spun”

Two years later, in September 2013, Asunta resumed her studies after a summer holiday with her nanny in her home village. Her parents stayed nearby in Santiago at their beach apartment, only spending one week of those six weeks with their daughter. After having worked separately on their own vision, watching their individual pieces come together as a powerful storytelling unit resulted in great emotional satisfaction for the directors. To Baeza, cats are poised creatures, making them the ideal subjects for her segment.

Australia’s Senior Managers Present ‘Michael’s Rule’ to Help Promote Local Music

You don’t have to have recently watched the BBC’s thriller The Girl Before to get a bad feeling about this, but it helps. The House, produced by UK-based Nexus Studios and streamed by Netflix, is an adult stop-motion anthology special. Three stories of roughly half an hour each are set in the same house in different eras.

It’s now an apartment complex, and the landlord, a cat named Rosa (Susan Wokoma) — she’s literally a cat, as is everyone else in this story — is determined to renovate the mansion. But she can’t get rent from her two remaining tenants; a young man named Elias (Will Sharpe) pays her in fish and a hippie lady named Jen (Helena Bonham Carter) pays her in crystals. When one of Jen’s mystical friends named Cosmos (Paul Kaye) comes to visit, Jen is shown that it’s time to let go of the house, but she stubbornly wants to stay put.

The only constant is the house, which is always recognizable despite superficial changes over the years. Like the first two chapters, the final story centers on a single-minded striver obsessed with her house, and watching her ambitions deflate around her. But where the first story is chilling and the second one is saddening, the third has other ambitions that make the whole project fall more clearly into place. All three parts were scripted by Irish playwright and screenwriter Enda Walsh (best known for 2008’s gutting historical film Hunger, directed by Steve McQueen and starring Michael Fassbender). And while Walsh’s scripts don’t initially seem to take place in the same world or have much in common, apart from the house’s layout, this third segment brings all three into focus.

As the least bleak of the three shorts, this one shows how the promise of a house has a seductive power, representing a desire to cling to the past even when the floor below you is slowly flooding. It’s also another striking feat of stop-motion animation, with lifelike sets and clothes that practically breathe as the furry characters move. “The House” is an animated anthology with an inspired narrative focus, as it tells the history of one building, across time and species.

"So we have a nice road map, and then once we got into production, the movie took on a life of its own, and we took some detours on that road. But I'm excited that if this movie is well received and we can keep them cranking, we got some new avenues to explore." A trend among entertainment companies as Hollywood continues its will-they/won’t-they relationship with a possible recession is the unloading of completed projects. The move has been seen across the industry, from AMC+ to Paramount+ and Disney to HBO Max. Now The Hollywood Reporter has learned of two completed Netflix feature films, The Inheritance and House/Wife, that will no longer be distributed by the streamer, with filmmakers shopping them elsewhere for distribution.

With its rising directors each employing a surreal style, it creates a rich balance of ethereal, existential storytelling with stop-motion animation that’s so detailed and alive you can practically feel it on your fingertips. The House also features some of the best-looking stop-motion animation you’ll see outside of a Laika film. The felt characters of chapter one lend it an almost cozy vibe, that makes the darker elements even more stark, while the second chapter is incredibly lifelike and detailed, right down to the little piece of tape covering the webcam on the contractor’s laptop. The final story, meanwhile, is more ethereal, with foggy backdrops that signal something approaching the end of the world.