I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016)

This film, the delicate and calmly paced Netflix poem, features more than one first-person voice-over introduction, a practice I often dislike. But in this case, although the script is possibly heavy-handed, it is not insipid. It gives the whole story a very literary tone that I enjoy. This tone continues as a significant character, Iris Blum (Paula Prentiss), was a novelist by trade before she came to need a hospice nurse (Lily, played by the stoic Ruth Wilson).

The muted tone continues dominating the film as its most significant feature. With little color, little noise, it aptly captures Lily's own experience nearly alone in a haunted house as she slowly experiences the deaths that she has come to live with, to come closer to understanding what that means, what those deaths were. And as she learns, so do we.

It is an experience. Like a perfectly prepared meal, it is not designed to be inhaled. If you like quickly-paced adventure/slashers, this will not satisfy you. It is a film of flavors, of odors, not sugar-highs or hot sauce.

I don't recall that it has any jump scares (a blessed relief, as I'm a horror movie patron with pretty severe anxiety, which makes me jumpy even when I'm not scared). No cheap tricks. It is a story well-told.

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