Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.
A great deal of modern horror is about putting as much blood on the screen as it will take. I’m not generally a fan of gore for its own sake. When it is used well as a legitimate part of the story, it can be extremely effective. When it shows up just for shock value or as fan service, I think that it generally fails. Because of this, I find it really interesting when a film takes the opposite path. The epically-named I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House is a movie of the second stripe. The goal here is to produce an atmosphere of dread without covering the screen in blood.
We are presented with hospice nurse Lily Saylor (Ruth Wilson), who has just been hired on as the live-in help of horror author Iris Blum (Paula Prentiss), who is slowly descending into dementia. The house in which the two live is old and, as befits the genre, both creepy and gifted with a strange, mysterious history. The original owners of the house never lived in it; they vanished on their wedding day. Iris has lived in the house for ages, and as Lily continues to live there, she begins to suspect that at least one of Iris’s books may have been relayed to her by a ghost that resides in the house.
