Review by CJ

Director:
Oz Perkins

Starring:
Ruth Wilson, Paul Prentiss, Lucy Boynton

Other notable appearances:
Bob Balaban, Brad Milne

Running time:
18 days (okay, IMDb says it was actually 87 minutes)

Watch this if you like:
Being so bored that it aches

Lily (Wilson) is a hospice nurse who comes to live with elderly horror writer Iris Blum (Prentiss) in her haunted house.

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House is hands down the dullest movie I have ever watched in entirety. I came across it in the horror section of Netflix, but it’s not scary. IMDb lists it as a thriller, but there is no suspense.

Visually I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House is unimpressive. The sets are bare and uninteresting. There are long, drawn out shots that focus on nothing. The ghosts simply look like holographic projections, rather than otherworldly beings.

The main character is insufferable. Even before anything starts to happen — well, as much as it does in I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House — she skulks around the house like she’s about to be whopped in the face with a rolled up newspaper, complains about how easily scared she is, and is just generally unlikeable.

In terms of all the characters, there’s little reason why they are in the situations they are in when we meet them. Come to think of it, there’s little explanation about the situations they are in or where they are at the film’s finale.

The plot is a mish mash of unexplained plot points, non-events and convoluted nothingness. I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House has a lot of narration that repeats itself, explains almost nothing and presents as arty gibberish.

I don’t like to give entirely negative reviews and must admit that I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House did grab me at the start. The first line of the film is a great hook. It’s unfortunate that the line snapped as soon as it had a bite.

In its simplest form, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House is an hour and a half of the protagonist tiptoeing meekly around a house where almost nothing is happening and narrating in repetitive riddles. I wouldn’t bother unless you are really into self-imposed boredom or purely artistic films with a lot of fluff and no entertainment value.

Rating:

“I have heard myself say that a house with a death in it can never again be bought or sold by the living.”