Review of I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016) by Ange Y — 08 Sep 2018

This movie was an attempt at classic Gothic Horror and I appreciate that. I am amazed at the level of pretentiousness in so many of the high star reviews. They claim that "oh, you just don't like nor understand gothic horror, this is Lovcraftian, this is Shelley! No wonder you hated it, you wanted jump scares". To liken this to Livecraft, and to Shelley, to 'Turn of the Screw' is insulting. I was the perfect candidate for this movie, I love gothic horror, I live atmosphere and slow burns. But the problem is, something still has to happen. I had the opportunity to feel unsettled... once or twice in this movie and then the finale relied on exactly what these reviews taut against... the jump scare.

So many subtle things could be utilized to have allowed the slow burn (this movie wasn't a slow burn, it was just a pot with nothing in it and the oven off). For example, 'The color out of space' is to this day a Lovecraft that scared me, a lot. Not a ton happens, just little things, the eerie glow getting worse and spreading, the crops dying, the water tasting funny, you know something is slowly building. In this movie, nothing is given the opportunity to build, all the burn comes from the poetic narration, it relies too heavily on it. Hell, she names those flowers in a scene, couldn't they be dead the next time she went in, the character unsure if she cared for them wrong or something else, further isolating her and highlighting her loneliness?

Things could have happend that weren't jump scares, but they felt overly poetic narration and atmosphere was more important than writing. They obviously tricked many, but a movie needs substance. Gothic horror has substance and to compare this to gothic horror is insulting, it might be helpful if the higher reviewers read the gothic horror, instead of falsely assuming it's all flowery language and atmosphere, the true scares come from the substance, from the small subtle things that happen, and exactly what this movie was lacking.