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I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House
Canada / USA 2016
produced by Robert Menzies, Rob Paris, Ian Bricke (executive), Alphonse Ghossein (executive), Matt Levin (executive) for Paris Film, Zed Filmworks, Go Insane Films/Netflix
directed by Oz Perkins
starring Ruth Wilson, Paula Prentiss, Bob Balaban, Lucy Boynton, Brad Milne, Daniel Chichagov, Erin Boyes, James Perkins, Beatrix Perkins
written by Oz Perkins, music by Elvis Perkins
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Lily (Ruth Wilson) is a young nurse who's hired to take care of Iris
Blum (Paula Prentiss), an elderly author of (very average) horror novels -
novels Lily would never read because she scares easily and has anxiety
issues on top of that. Now in all, taking care of Iris is easy enough, she
sleeps most of the time anyway, and that she insists on adressing Lily by
the name of Polly might be due to her condition. So that leaves Lily
plenty of time to explore the house, and that's not a good thing given
Lily's easily frightened. And the house, old and cold as it is, has a
creepy atmosphere to it, only augmented by the sounds such old places tend
to make. Also there's a growing spot of mold on one of the walls, a spot
Lily asks to be fixed, but Mr. Waxcap (Bob Balaban), attorney of Iris's
estate, claims there's no money for that. He also tells her about the
"real" Polly (Lucy Boynton), who's actually a character of
Iris's novels, Lady in the Walls, a novel Lily soon starts to read
- but she takes the book too much at face value, identifies too much with
Polly, and soon starts to believe the spot of mold on the wall is key to
the mystery. Thing is, there's something otherworldly going on in the
place, something that Lili approaches all wrong ... I am the
Pretty Thing That Lives in the Wall certainly isn't your usual ghost
story, with effects and jump scares, and lots of running and screaming -
quite the contrary really, this film has a deliberately slow pace that
sometimes seems to come to a halt, often favours a very stylized
off-screen narration over on-screen action, and that has little in the
effects department and nothing that goes above the basic. And all that
makes I am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the Wall quite an
interesting film, it's one that encourages mentally emerging oneself into
the story, and one that's really all atmosphere over action. That said,
the film isn't perfect, it at times slows down too much from its already
laid back pace, and in the end it leaves a few too many questions open,
but sure is interesting enough to deserve a watch. By the way,
filmmaker Oz Perkins dedicated the movie to his father, the great Anthony
Perkins, who's represented here by a song he recorded back when, You
Keep Coming Back Like a Song, and a clip from one of his early movies,
Friendly Persuasion.
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