No Place Like Home
Children trapped in the very place they should be safest
The House I: And heard within, a lie is spun (2022) d: Emma De Swaef, Marc James Roels
The Wolf House (2018) d: Cristobal León, Joaquín Cociña
Opal (2014) d: Jack Stauber
Skinamarink (2022) d: Kyle Edward Ball
The House is an anthology film that tells three stories, but we’re focused on the first one here (the other two are worth a watch, they just aren’t thematically related to this collection). Horror darling of the hour, Mia Goth, voices the main character, Mabel, whose family is suddenly given a mansion at no cost by a shady architect. Mabel and her baby sister watch as her parents become more and more entranced with the house, which slowly transforms into something more sinister. The girls are driven to find escape as their parents go through their own transformation.
The Wolf House is the story of Maria, a young girl who flees her German cult in Chile, with a pursuing Wolf at her heels, and finds “refuge” in an abandoned house. If “German cult in Chile” made you assume post-WWII Nazis….well yeah you’re obviously correct. The cult is based on the very real Colonia Dignidad. In a framing device before the action starts, we’re told this is actually a propaganda piece created by the cult (with a hefty dose of Struwwelpeter morality, IYKYK). What I’m saying is, there are layers. Which is also how the visuals are built. In any given “scene” the characters are built and dissolved bit by bit; disorientingly, you never know how dimensional they will appear at any given moment. Maria is alternately rendered as a 2-D drawing, a crude papier-mache doll, a puppet, and in-between, but always seemingly limited to a single room in her new home. Nothing is static, everything is liminal, including Maria’s relationship to The Wolf, whose dulcet gaslighting often intrudes on her attempts to build her own life. I can’t recommend this movie enough, it is spellbinding. (Content warning: child sexual abuse. It’s not explicit, but it’s hovering over everything)
Jack Stauber’s Opal is a short, musical, stop-motion animated film for Adult Swim - wait, wait, wait, stay with me - and holy hell does it pack a punch in its 12 minutes. I didn’t seek Opal out - the still promo was on HBO Max, I was intrigued, and I’m so glad I pressed play. Opal is a young girl with a loving family, who is drawn to the forbidden house across the street and the cries she hears from inside. I don’t want to explain too much, but if you look up “show, don’t tell” in the dictionary, it would just list this movie.
Skinamarink is the only one of these films that isn’t stop-motion animated, but it has its own distinct aesthetic - namely, extra grainy home video. The story is simple - two children wake up in the night to find their father is gone, and all of the windows and doors in their home have disappeared. A quick Google search of this movie will reveal a passionate audience divide. People either love or hate this movie. I can definitely understand the haters, this will seriously not be everyone’s tea. It almost wasn’t mine! After the first 15 minutes, I was this close to turning it off, because it’s a whole lot of nothing. I thought it was so boring….but if you let it, it burrows into your brain. To me, it felt like the eerie, sleepy disorientation of waking up in the night in a friend’s basement at a sleepover. It's hypnotic and everything is off kilter - weird camera angles, grainy visuals, too quiet then suddenly too loud. It certainly drags, and I even felt like I might fall asleep, but that was also part of it? It pulled me into a dreamlike state, and then Barbie showed up, and I found myself, somehow, terrified. By the end of this movie, I was clutching my blanket under my face, which I NEVER do. Give it a try - you might think it’s wildly overrated….or you might end up scared shitless by a Fisher-Price Chatter Phone.