Shows & Movies

To preface, if you have not watched The House, it's on Netflix, it's beautiful, it's horrifying, it's raw. PLEASE go watch it. The stop motion is great, the voicing is lovely, and the stories it tells are haunting. I WILL HOWEVER. Warn it is a horror movie. And if you have any form of phobia towards bugs TREAD VERY CAREFULLY WITH CHAPTER TWO.

The first chapter is about the "creation" of The House, in a way. A mysterious architect by the name of Van Schoonbeek offered a less than well off family the opportunity of luxury. The father, Raymond , is consumed by his hunger for material wealth, brought on by the sneers of his extended family, eloquent and rich. Everything he wanted but couldn't have. This hunger, this yearning even, drove him to selfishness and desire. Raymond and his wife, Penny were so enthralled by the idea of gaining social status with a beautiful new home. The only ones not falling for the temptation, are the two daughters.. Mabel and Isobel , so young, in an unfamiliar place. This House was not a home, it brought no joy.

The comfort and security of what was truly their home was gone, replaced by the hollow, hungering House. It'd begun to sink it's claws into the girls' parents. This eerie and new place would change and shift, warping every day like a shifting mass of flesh. Mabel and Isobel's suffering is something that could have been prevented. Greed consumed, and burned Raymond & Penny brightly. Like kindling.

And then, like it was nothing, we are ripped away. To the second chapter we meet The Contractor (people tend to call him The Developer but I'm stubborn), a mouse who is trying to renovate The House, in a modern day. His need to sell The House has consumed his life, he worries and frets over every single little thing, shoddily trying to keep the additions together with his own skills that barely keep things together.

The prospective buyers walking through on the open house disregard him, and see him no more than a pest, they shrug off his attempts to list selling points of the home. It feels like all is going to pieces, the shots linger on the facts that all the people track in dirt & grime. Children strung along with their parents causing messes typical to a kid add to this discord, when eventually The Contractor meets The Odd Couple.
The Odd Couple is a strange duo.. They are like mice but the woman is too long, she's strange and towering. But the man is squat, fat, and equally overbearing. The Odd Couple are a constant presence in The Contractor's life henceforth. They linger, barely giving him time alone.

It's when we find The Contractor is harassing his own dentist with personal calls.. He is isolated, and is being driven to the brink by The House. As time goes on we find the place is infested with bugs. The Odd Couple is truthfully fur beetles. They've begun to trash the home.. Further driving The Contractor into a depression. He is alone, and nobody is here to help him out.

I'll be honest I can't comment much about the second chapter, as I had to stop watching it due to not being able to handle the bugs. Kudos to the artists honestly. But in the end, I was able to continue when the third chapter started. It's in this chapter we meet Rosa, a cat landlord who's down on her luck. The House is still standing, yet the land around the home is flooded. The two tenants of Rosa's are two peculiar cats. Elias, the black bombay who's young demeanor is at odds with Rosa's more serious and seasoned personality, and Jen, a more laid back grey and white cat who carries an air of spirituality and mysticism to her. Though she lets them stay, Rosa is often annoyed or upset by them, often because she wishes they'd pay rent. We get to know Rosa a little through her attempts to refurbish the vacant rooms of The House, much to her unsuccessful dismay. Wallpaper refuses to stick, the boards creak on the steps, the flood ever so slowly leaks into the front door.. But Rosa doesn't face the same challenges The Contractor did. She isn't trying to sell The House, nor turn it into what it isn't. But her attempts still meet with resistence.

It feels at first as if Rosa is in a loop.. Until Jen's long distance friend, Cosmos , a rusty colored cat arrives on a little boat. He's eccentric and strange to Rosa, spouting nonsense to the trio. He's an intrusion on her goal, and she would rather he leave her in peace. But his presence argues otherwise.. It's not until Rosa accidentally has an outburst towards Elias does she begin to wake up. She drove one of her only friends away, and regrets it. It's here we discover Cosmos has modified The House to be set free.

Rosa is no longer chained to the allure of the home. Cosmos was the outside force to help begin Rosa's self realization. She was not isolated, nor alone like the previous chapters. The House was not a malicious force in of itself.. Others have theorized that The House is akin to a conduit, amplifying those emotions and desires. I quite earnestly agree. After all, it's just a collection of bricks.

I guess it's obvious my favorite chapter was the final one. It gave us a glimpse of hope. Things aren't doomed to be misery forever.. We're capable of being free from obsessions that hurt us, but sometimes, this freedom is attained by external help.
While there really isn't a collective fandom for The House, I did come across and subsequently inspired by, a fanfic from The House's point of view. It was a creative concept to see what the building itself would feel during these events.

I personally did not write a fanfic that was from the same POV, but I did write a short continuation of the third chapter. I wanted to know where they were going, and how the rest of life has been surviving in such a flood.