The House
When Animation Dips its Toes in Horror
This movie is unsettling and creepy.
And I absolutely loved it in spite of my distaste for it.
Most any animated movie I will bow down to it and appreciate the effort for what it is: phenomenal, collaborative, and absolutely stunning. This is no exception. “The House” is stop-motion in the style of Tim Burton and Wes Anderson and leans heavily into the public consciousness of animated films being children movies.
The problem is that animation is often seen as a genre, when it is actually a film medium, just one of many ways that a story is told on the screen. There is a collective (incorrect) consensus of animated works being specifically for children and that whatever comes from this medium cannot be complex or intelligent, but I raise you Hayao Miyazaki films, Satoshi Kon works, and anything Cartoon Network and Disney Television Animation has produced in the last decade to prove that compelling storytelling can come from 3-dimensional 2D characters.
As a medium, animation in the right hands can do so much. The only thing limiting animation is one’s imagination.
“The House” is not bereft of imagination.
It is split into 3 separate story arcs, each one following different people but connected by the House and its vapid history, and each one directed by a different mind.
The first story is the beginning; how The House is created and the unusual horrors that Isabel and Mabel encounter. It immediately reminds me of “Monster House” and bits of “Spirited Away” as their parents are taken by the house and it, seemingly, goes up in flames as they barely escape from its clutches.
Yet The House is intact in the second story. Perhaps dirty, dingy, infested, and modern, but mostly intact. The Rat protagonist in this story fixes up The House and desperately tries to sell it. There’s a wonderful scene of the Rat losing his mind and the bugs hidden in the walls perform a Super-Bowl-worthy dance routine.
The last story is beautiful in the lighting and devastated landscape. The House, still standing, is surrounded by water and inhabited by cats. The irony of a cat, surrounded by water, made me giggle.
At this point, there is nothing good about this House. It has seen madness and horror and now it is a final landing point for those stranded and lost. There is nothing redeeming about it.
And yet…the final story is a redemption. The House has provided nothing good, yet in this final story it finally does good and gives the last protagonist a means of escape despite being the very thing that has shackled her down for so long.
The music is so powerful. Low, thrumming chords build into a crescendo of NOISE. It drowns out any other sound or dialogue and demands to have as much attention as the images on the screen. It elevates these uncomfortable scenes into something much more frightening, something alive and willing to spread harm.
The music, paired with the voice acting of normal people trying to live out normal lives in a possessed house makes this a horror. They’re unaware of the danger literally surrounding them, while we are privy to the sound effects and distasteful history. It’s like they’re dancing on their graves unawares and we, the viewers, holding the gun and the shovel.
But, as we all know. It’s just. An animation.