if one thing is certain with i am the pretty thing that lives in the house it's that the reviews
are very divided i didn't look at any reviews before watching it but i found it to have some
pretty terrible decision making going on and there were a lot of things in this that i thought were
very poorly done but some things that were done very well as well so i will explain
without giving any spoilers but i looked at reviews off because i thought am i
am i alone with this am i the only person who thinks that it's actually
not very well done in a lot of ways and it turns out that there are a lot of people who
are saying it's boring it's terrible the pacing's awful it's not scary etc
and then there are the people who are saying it's one of the best gothic horrors they've ever seen
and i want to say to that how many have you actually seen because it's it's not a good
storyteller it's atmospheric and i thought the atmosphere was spot-on but as a narrative
there's so much wrong with it well so much is maybe a bit of an overstatement but i will explain
in a moment once i actually tell you what on earth it's about so it was released in 2016 written and
directed by oz perkins stars ruth wilson as lily and paul apprentice and iris blum and i will say
straight away the acting was fantastic um lily is our protagonist great great character very
interesting um sometimes sometimes kind of the every person you can kind of imagine yourself in
her shoes which i think is really important when you're trying to get to the heart of a
gothic horror or a thriller paul apprentice plays iris who is an elderly author and i think she's
one of the most amazingly well-acted characters i've ever seen i genuinely like this character i
love the character writing i love the development i love how eerie she was from the word go
credit where credit is due that character is fantastic the acting of that character spot
on whenever she was on screen i felt unnerved i thought she was amazing and lily uh is a nurse
who is um who's come along to take care of iris and straight away you can tell that
the house is a little bit peculiar but what i hate it it actually starts off being narrated
and that's not always a bad thing but the first i want to say four or five minutes of this is just
voiceover narration and then we get to see lily in the house but the narration continues now if
your character is on screen and we can see their face there's no need for this much narration
and it does this quite frequently quite often we'll have this voiceover narration um from lily
and it's not it's not needed it's absolutely not needed it does not drive the plot forward it takes
you out of the moment it's completely jarring but not in a way that makes you feel more unnerved and
immersed in this horror it's just bad filmmaking it's just ugly it's horrific her tone of voice
is beautiful she's got that spot on for that kind of eerie slightly whispering narration and if it
was done maybe just once yeah fine fair enough it works well but it's quite frequent and it's just
horrible it doesn't work well a lot of people said in negative reviews that not a lot happens
and that is very true it's a very slow film gothic horrors tend to be a lot more psychological
they keep you on the edge of your seat they're not really jump scares and slashers so if that's the
kind of thing you like that's not what's going to happen here and i tend to love that kind of thing
ordinarily i love films that you know even though not a lot's happening you can't take your eyes
away that's not the case here it's very boring the atmosphere is amazing the sound effects incredible
it does feel very atmospheric and you can feel in the pit of your stomach that there's
there's something there there's something with the house or about the house that's unnerving
but you can't put your finger on it and yes i was intrigued to find out what that was but it
takes a long time to actually give us tidbits of information it doesn't really plant many seeds
and i feel like the narrative was not very well developed it wasn't a very good storyteller
and gothic horror lends itself to brilliant storytelling and i think maybe that's why they
made the decision to narrate some of it because it makes it feel like they're telling you a story
but unfortunately the bits that weren't narrated were just very poor and didn't really tell us any
story at all so they got the balance they are completely way off and i feel like that is such
a shame because the story itself and i won't really say what it's about other than what
i've mentioned because i don't want to spoil it but it was really fascinating when we did
finally start to get bits of information and could kind of work a few things out
i was intrigued i thought this this actually sounds like a really brilliant concept
unfortunately this potentially thrilling dark chilling almost enchanting captivating narrative
was so poorly executed that it completely ruined something that could have been beautiful
unfortunately i am the pretty thing that lives in the house is not a good horror film it's not
dramatic iris as a character is fantastic she's been completely wasted in this film
the lighting's way off as well there are some scenes where it's quite dark and we're supposed
to be able to see things that are kind of lurking or things that we maybe suspect
but it's too dark can't see anything it doesn't work well so many things wrong
with the actual technical aspects but it is atmospheric scary no suspenseful a little bit
but poorly developed poorly executed and an absolute waste of what could have been fantastic