Movies come at you from all angles these days. People love stories and streaming companies make enough money to create their own content. I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House is a notable effort for a Gothic film, financed by Netflix. The pace is fairly slow and there’s little in the way of jump startles or bloodshed. The story isn’t fully explained, but then it revolves around a horror writer, so that’s not unexpected, I suppose. Lily is called in as a hospice nurse for Iris, although what Iris is dying from isn’t specified. The estate manager supposes the stay won’t be long, but Lily remains in the house for eleven months, not leaving at all. A few creepy things happen, but nothing terribly threatening. Meanwhile, Lily, who admits to being too scared to read horror, decides to investigate Iris’ best-known book because Iris keeps calling her by the name of one of the characters (Polly).
After several months of this, Lily comes to believe that Polly was a real person and that she was murdered in the house. Up front the movie announces itself as a ghost story and lets us know that Lily won’t survive the year. That’s technically not a spoiler, since it says so at the very beginning. The question becomes, what has happened to Lily? Iris remains pretty firmly in the background, but she is the one who initiated the story. The movie strongly implies, without outright stating it, that Polly was a real person who somehow channeled her story to Iris. Iris, however, when she talks about Polly, seems to take the point of view of her murdering husband. I won’t say how Lily fails to survive the year because that might actually be a spoiler.
This is one of those movies that relies on mood more than plot. In that it manages to approach Gothic sensibilities with the very premise being, from the start, that ghosts own a house. I live in an old house. Apart from the previous owners, who both left alive, I have no idea who might’ve lived here since about 1890. I haven’t seen any ghosts but I often do wonder what has happened in this place. There are those who prefer modern houses with shiny surfaces (and generally no books), but some of us prefer to take our chances with history. We may never unpack that history but living among it makes us feel connected. That’s kind of like the experience of watching I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. Only we hope that are good guests in what may be somebody else’s dwelling.
