The House
NETFLIXA foot on the property ladder is the least of the worries for the characters within The House, the latest Netflix feature. The House brings into question Netflix’s greenlight approval system, which appears to be some form of pinwheel that is spun violently and lands on the oddest of works. An animated anthology of horror shorts with musicians Jarvis Cocker and Dizzie Rascal voicing rats and beetles, along with Helena Bonham Carter and Matthew Goode in other segments, is a fascinating project. Not for Netflix, that is for sure. It’s the equivalent of Apple TV+ greenlighting Anomalisa or some degenerate, felt-modelled animation in the throes of a horror-clad mid-life crisis. At least The House knows it is in the midst of not knowing what to do with itself.
Scurrying to and fro through three charged and underwhelming horror shorts, The House has a simple song and dance for each of its stories, all connected by taking place in the same house. Its first story, a tale of a man making a deal with some devilish, undescribed entity has all the right building blocks but not the time to use them. Goode and Mark Heap feature in this short, with the two offering the weird side of horror without the context or the build-up necessary to make it horrifying. It is well-animated, as all three segments are, but not quite as stunning as it should be. Cocker and Rascal feature in the second, the former as a rat struggling to sell the cursed house he’s just remodelled. The final and weakest piece of the three is helmed by Carter as a frustrated landlord of the house, now sinking into an endless ocean.
No story stands out, either a damning conviction of how mediocre anthologies can be or an appraisal of how consistent this anthology series is. It is more the former than the latter, mainly because The House has great ideas but no clue of how to showcase them. For every nice bit of animation from this trio of directors (Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Emma De Swaef and Marc James Roels), there is a lack of substance to the horror. Cocker may be converting a house laden with beetles and bugs, but there is no context. Goode losing his mind in a mansion after selling his home to vague architects is a grand setup, but how does that make him go mad? It is The House itself that is mad and horrifying, but that is never communicated to an audience with much relevance to the story.
Having Cocker in the ensemble and not using his cult track This House is Condemned is a loss The House will have to deal with because it deals with its horrors and darker tones with little thought too. Still, his end credits song is perhaps the best part of The House for music lovers. There are good opportunities for three generations of compact tales from a dark place. But there is little message underlining them. All of it centres around one house, but little connection can be made between the three stories aside from desperate people doing little wrong and being punished for it. Well-animated, it will definitely cut through with some interesting moments and colourful scenes, but The House is condemned to instability and brief flutters of brilliance.