The House (2022) - Visually arresting stop motion is a creepy treat
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Stop motion takes on a new form of creepy in this adult dark comedy anthology, produced by Nexus Studios. Directed by Emma de Swaef and Marc James Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr, and Paloma Baeza, The House is composed of three short stories, exploring the same eerie house and its inhabitants at three different time periods. De Swaef and Roels’ sinister tale starts the anthology off with a bang: young Mabel (voiced by Mia Goth), her parents Raymond and Penny (Matthew Goode and Claudie Blakley), and baby Isobel live in poverty, until a mysterious architect proposes to build them a house if they vacate their current home. The family eagerly move in, but as their parents become more and more distracted by the luxury they have inherited, Mabel and her sister grow isolated in the rapidly shifting house.
There is so much about this first instalment that disconcerts, but no doubt the parents’ sudden behavioural change is what takes the cake. At first calm and attentive (albeit the father’s drinking problem makes him more vulnerable to exterior influences), the new house, presided over by the mysterious Mr Van Schoonbeck, brings out the excess in them. Scenes in which Raymond eats and drinks ravenously (alongside the theme of parents being hypnotised while the children remain unaffected, this scene is strangely reminiscent of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away), or in which Penny obsessively sews, are suddenly more frightening, especially seeing as the rest of the time they walk around the house brain dead, or look out windows laughing hysterically. Meanwhile, Mabel and Isobel navigate the house alone, left to their own devices as silent workmen stare at them from inside empty rooms, and staircases are removed, barring their route to the lower floor and their parents. Both strange and nightmarish, exploring the devilish effects of luxury and greed on us, this first instalment is no doubt the scariest of the three, perhaps simply because it is the only one to feature humans (and particularly creepy ones at that).
The second instalment sees an anthropomorphised property developer rat (voiced by Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker) refurbish the house, now on a modern street, for a property viewing. Out of his depth and desperate, tackling an infestation of bugs hours before the viewing, he makes a fool of himself in front of potential buyers, in a clumsy sequence that had me shouting “Put the canapés down!” at the television. All seems worth it when a strangely proportioned couple express interest in buying the house; the property developer quickly realises that renovating it was only the start of his problems. There is definitely an allusion to be made with Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite here, no less because of the insect symbolic that pervades the story. It’s also darkly comical, particularly during the property viewing sequence in which the rat runs around different rooms of the house, latching – parasitically – onto visitors, offering up details about the kitchen’s marble floor, or the sound system connected to his phone. It is both cringe-worthy and unsettling, literally like hundreds of insects crawling up and down your back.
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In a somewhat dystopian setting, the third instalment sees the house stand alone, a stagnant island and the only building still afloat for miles. Anthropomorphic cat Rosa (voiced by Susan Wokoma) works hard to restore it, but she encounters difficulties with funding, especially seeing as her sole tenants, Jen (Helena Bonham-Carter) and Elias (Will Sharpe), pay her in crystals and fish, respectively. When Jen’s ‘spiritual lover’ Cosmos (Paul Kaye) shows up, the three force Rosa to reflect on the importance she attaches to the house.
The third instalment is perhaps the weakest of the three, though it provides a certain degree of solace to finish things off with. And yet there’s also quite an eerie foreshadowing: though it is visually calming, a bright veranda with flowers and vine hanging from the ceiling, a foggy sea of protruding church spires, it is also a reminder that this dystopia is perhaps not too far off in the future (or happening right now). It’s also quite a sad, hopeless story: the fact that Rosa’s dream of welcoming tenants into her house directly contrasts with how empty the world seems. It’s a bittersweet ending to an otherwise deeply unsettling collection of stories.
Though each short displays a different aesthetic and style, the final product is visually stunning, a succession of details each more nightmarish than the last. A weirdly hallucinatory session occurs in all three of them, the most striking a precisely choreographed dance of beetles and larvae. Perhaps, the property developer looking on incredulously at this performance is a reflection of ourselves watching The House: shocked, a little bit unsettled, but fascinated all the same.