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I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House is a lightly gothic murder ballad made with great finesse and a fine cast, including a rare appearance by semi-retired screen veteran Paula Prentiss. Proving February was no fluke, Perkins has made a vintage haunted-house thriller that owes more to the creeping dread of Polanski, Kubrick or Lynch than to more bloodthirsty recent subgenres of horror. It may ultimately impress more with its brooding literary atmosphere than with its familiar narrative ingredients, but this crisp little mood piece still jangles the nerves.
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I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House had premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2016, and was released worldwide on Netflix on October 28. The film received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics, who praised its atmosphere and cinematography, but criticized its screenplay, slow pacing and failure to explain the plot. No one has seen this ghost except the viewer, not even Ms. Blum. We see it creeping around the house just as we see Lily creeping around the house. In the final confrontation, Lily turns around and looks at us, the viewer, and gasps. The camera cuts to a closeup of an eye showing Polly’s reflection.
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Investigating a mysterious sound, Lily finds the wall boards removed and piled beside the moldy wall. Turning, she sees what appears to be the ghost of Polly and dies from a heart attack. Lily’s ending is not identical to Polly’s, which we discover left her murdered and buried in the wall of the house. The month ahead will bring new films from Alex Garland, Luca Guadagnino, Dev Patel, and more. To help you plan your moviegoing options, our editors have selected the most notable films releasing in April 2024, listed in alphabetical order. With the arrival of Zack Snyder's latest Rebel Moon chapter on Netflix, we rank every one of the director's films—from bad to, well, less bad—by Metascore.
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She’s essentially alone in that Iris doesn’t speak much, spending her time in bed. We only have one real scene of character exposition early, when Lily is on the phone and we learn that she was almost married once. And, of course, Perkins knows we’ll remember that narration about Lily not making her next birthday. And those not interested in the new trend of horror movies focusing on women's experiences will likely agree with the critics who accuse the film of being empty and devoid of any real substance.
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And that’s what makes it so perfect; those small moments that feel like mammoth rewards, the ways in which Perkins makes the viewer work for gratification. The batty scribe keeps calling the nurse Polly, who is in fact a character from one of Blum’s most popular novels. Lily reads said book and becomes lost in its narrative, the likes of which is realized for us in some effective asides, and soon, what’s happening on page begins to affect what’s happening in the real world. In many ways, “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House” feels more like a first film than “February” in that its ambitions sometimes feel a bit out of reach for the final product. It’s something that might have worked even better as a short film or an episode of an anthology series, as one can feel it stretching to meet a short running time.
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With her mind now clouded by dementia, Iris insists on calling her new nurse Polly, mistaking Lily for her most famous literary creation. Already highly strung, Lily increasingly falls prey to scary noises and visions as she creeps around this creaky old house, which seems to be haunted by the ghostly bride (Lucy Boynton). The lapse in coverage on it may come from Netflix's inability to promote its Originals, with niche art house films like this one getting buried beneath the never-ending barrage of new content. Or maybe it's because this ghost story is often categorized as a horror movie, but better suited to suspense lovers. Perhaps it's the sentence-long title which, while intriguing, is not very search friendly.
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It is one of the few things in this film of which we can be certain. We meet protagonist Lily Saylor (Ruth Wilson), a live-in nurse, on the day she moves into elderly horror author Iris Blum's (Paula Prentiss) house to take care of her. But as she says, "A house with a death in it can never again be bought or sold by the living. It can only be borrowed from the ghosts that have stayed behind."
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There is nothing that chains them to where their bodies have fallen. But still they confine themselves, held in place by their looking. Wilson is a beguiling presence whose large, expressive eyes are a horror director’s dream. But save for a final primal scream, she’s never afforded the chance to cut loose and show off her chops. Straight out of the gate, Perkins announces he’s not out to surprise, instead relying on atmosphere to keep you invested. He and his gifted cinematographer Julie Kirkwood do a bang-up job of capturing every foreboding shadow in the isolated country manor where the entire film is set.
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Throughout, Perkins subverts the male gaze and its uncomfortable relationship between pretty female "things" and cameras. Again and again, we are shown seductively beautiful and disturbingly immaculate images of feminine beauty. The camera fixates on them -- until the pretty thing turns her head to face us head-on, her unwavering gaze of defiance, sadness, or fear somehow implicating the audience in her distress. What was an object of desire suddenly becomes a subject of undefinable depth.
In 1812, Polly, wearing a wedding dress and black blindfold, walks through the empty house under the watchful eye of her husband. In this way, Lily becomes a medium for the fluidity of life and death in the house. In two especially strange and unexplained scenes featuring Lily’s voiceover, she is shown in a blurred, high contrast black-and-white image, and something appears to be coming out of her mouth.
A young nurse takes care of elderly author who lives in a haunted house. A young nurse takes care of an elderly author who lives in a haunted house.A young nurse takes care of an elderly author who lives in a haunted house.A young nurse takes care of an elderly author who lives in a haunted house. To everyone else, you are in for a hidden gem of slow-burning horror. The film's dream-like narrative emerges through the disparate yet intertwined lives (and deaths) of three women, all colliding under the same roof of a haunted house. I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives suffocates you in a skin-crawling tension that reeks of dread and rot, while somehow still wafting in the scent of Chanel's most alluring perfume. Perkins lays his cards on the table from the opening scene, an impressionistic montage of ghostly imagery wrapped in a lengthy poetic voiceover about how the dead are only ever dimly aware of how they actually died.
We rank every one of the British director's movies by Metascore, from his debut Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels to his brand new film, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. For whatever reason, you've missed out on one of Netflix's most daring experiments, and one of the most evocative atmospheric horror films exploring the female psyche since Polanksi's Repulsion. Often, each woman looks directly into the camera, reversing the inherent voyeurism of watching a film.
Ultimately though, a solid paranormal tale requires a strong backbone, or in the very least a plucky protagonist. That’s where I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House falls woefully short. A Golden Globe-winning Brit, Wilson (The Affair, Luther) handles her debut leading role with aplomb, couching her credible American accent in nervy mannerisms that speak volumes about Lily’s brittle, paranoid nature.
It was later renamed The Blackcoat’s Daughter, and is finally set to make its long-delayed U.S. debut next year. In the meantime, Netflix have commissioned this classy sophomore effort from Perkins. Lily has come to this home to take care of an elderly woman named Iris Blum. In a very unspecified time period (although phones are rotary, televisions have rabbit ears, and we see VHS tapes for video and cassette tapes for audio), Lily starts freaking out about the “creepy” old house on night one.
Following its big-screen launch in Toronto, it debuts on Netflix October 28. Iris Blum, a retired horror writer, suffers from dementia and lives in a remote house in Braintree, Massachusetts. The house was built by a man for his new bride, but the couple vanished on their wedding day and left the house unfurnished. Iris's estate manager, Mr. Waxcap, hires live-in nurse Lily Saylor to care for her.
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