Hooptober XII | 13/31 | Canadian
… a house with a death in it can never again be bought or sold by the living. It can only be borrowed by the ghosts that have stayed behind […] We have stayed to look back for a glimpse at the very last moments of their lives. But the memories of their own deaths are faces on the wrong side of wet windows […] They are free to go, but still they confine themselves, held in place by their looking.
Lily Saylor, a hospice nurse, thinks of the house at the end of Teacup Road in Braintree, Massachusetts, where she lived and cared for a retired horror writer named Iris Blum. It is the place where she will die. On her first arrival, Lily finds Iris gazing out the window, her eyes filled with shock and confusion. Lily feels the urge to snoop around in the drawers, but lightly slaps her own hand to punish herself.
That night, after getting ready for bed, Lily calls a friend on the house phone in the kitchen. While catching up, she hears steps upstairs. The long cord of the house phone floats off the ground as if someone were holding it. Something jerks the phone out of Lily’s hand and onto the ground. Later that night, while looking through Iris’ office, Iris stumbles out of bed, calling Lily “Polly.
Who is Polly? What is going on with this house?
It's a terrible thing to look at oneself, and all the while, see nothing.
The film tells you straight away, through its opening monologue, that ghosts ruminate and revisit, trapped in their own cycles. It also tells you that a ghost is narrating this story. So, do not be surprised when the movie ruminates and revisits its themes. Shinamarink took this atmospheric fixation to its logical extremes — I only mention it because this movie seems about as divisive as it is in terms of how it progresses (or doesn’t).
The camera will often sit in the center of a space and work in a slow circle, letting the slowness of the pan create the tension. Or, it will sit in a dark corner of the house, allowing the room’s darkness to create a silhouette around the scene. That said, I could not get my house dark enough to see what was on screen at times.
I saw a review comparing this movie to the writing of Shirley Jackson, and I can definitely see that through the character of Lily. The way she talks to herself, gives human names to flowers, and other eccentricities make her feel unreliable, or at least off in her own way. Lily’s self-loathing comes through in how she punishes herself for snooping or when she blames the phone jerking out of her hand on her “clumsiness.”
Paula Prentiss is the most beautiful 80-year-old I’ve seen in a movie. She came onto the film because she is a family friend of director Osgood Perkins, whose father, Anthony Perkins, Paula acted with.
The place where this film likely falters for many is that the mystery components are pretty obvious, so it’s a matter of watching the protagonist figure out what we did straight away. Some of it is intentional, but enough is noticeable.
Still, I enjoyed the film. I understand its divisive nature, but the vibes are right up my alley.