By Robert Scucci | Updated
I was pleasantly surprised the other day when I stumbled upon this The house on Netflix. I was originally looking for an entertainment program that my children could enjoy on the weekend. When I saw the title card for The houseI knew immediately that the content would hinge on the surreal, macabre aspects of domesticated life, and the TV-MA ratings all but confirmed my suspicion that I shouldn’t appear The house soon to my 3 and 6 year old.
Parental caution aside, I watched The house for my personal enjoyment, and I will tell everyone I know who has a Netflix account to watch this dark animated anthology special until they get tired of hearing me talk about it.
The house is divided into three 30-minute segments on completely different timelines within the constructs of the same mysterious house built in the late 19th century. As The house The film took me from a quaint past to a busy present and the not-too-distant future that portends the fast approach of the end times. I was mesmerized by every frame of this brilliantly animated Netflix special.
Story 1: And inside a lie is being spun
The first part of The house on Netflix begins with an impoverished family who are gifted a brand new house built by a mysterious architect named Mr. Van Schoonbeek (Barney Pilling). The family, consisting of sisters Mabel (Mia Goth) and Isobel (uncredited) and their parents Raymond (Matthew Goode) and Penny (Claudie Blakley), move into their new, fully furnished and staffed home. While Raymond, a drunk, and Penny, a seamstress, are thrilled by the house’s elegant home-cooked meals and sumptuous design, Mabel has bad feelings about the new living situation.
Communicating primarily with Mr. Thomas (Mark Heap), Mr. Van Schoonbeek’s employee and main contact, Mabel becomes increasingly suspicious as creepy contractors work all night, constantly changing the floor plan and lurking in the shadows as they slowly remodel the house an unrecognizable, inescapable labyrinth. Despite Mr. Thomas’s reassurance, Mabel fears that the house will eventually swallow her and her family.
Story 2: Then the truth that cannot be won is lost
In a move into modern times, the Netflix special’s eponymous house is now surrounded by a sprawling cityscape populated by anthropomorphic rats. At first I rolled my eyes at the obvious pun about modern life being a rat race, but in this context it works surprisingly well. This second piece follows an unnamed rat developer (voiced by Jarvis Cocker) and shows how urgently he needs to complete his renovations and get the house back on the market so he can pay off his business loan.
The house is initially in a state of disrepair, but only until the developer’s efforts to fend off a relentless insect infestation and fix myriad structural and electrical problems through his own shoddy, half-hearted contract work come into focus. After firing his entire team, the developer works alone to ensure the upcoming open house goes smoothly. As he realizes that his debts are getting deeper and deeper, he slowly begins to unravel.
While the developer fails to sell the house, some interested buyers decide to move in against the developer’s wishes and invite their family to live in the residence.
Story 3: Listen again and look for the sun
Without getting the past and current stories out of the way, The house takes the audience into the third and final act.
Although we’re still dealing with the same house that started this Netflix special, it might as well be a completely different abode, since the world around it has changed so much and influenced its architecture. In a town now inhabited by anthropomorphic cats, who I can only assume were tricked into taking care of the rats in the second story, we meet Rosa (Susan Wokoma), a down-on-his-luck, determined landlady about the restoration of her parents’ house, which now serves as a run-down residential building.
In this timeline in the Netflix special, the house is surrounded by a seemingly endless body of water, which made me wonder when Kevin Costner would sail in to save the day a la Water world. One of Rosa’s tenants, Jen (Helena Bonham Carter), brings her spiritual partner Cosmos (Paul Kaye) to the house to help with renovations, as he is supposedly a competent contractor. Instead, he tears up the floorboards to build rafts on which everyone can sail to a new life before the entire city is flooded and no longer livable.
Stream “The House” on Netflix
The house is undoubtedly one of the most exciting animated specials I’ve seen in a long time. In a special animated entirely through stop-motion sequences, each character moves fluidly with a seriousness and curiosity that some live-action content would struggle to replicate. If I had to summarize it The house In a word I would say it is “intentional”. Each segment presents a moral conundrum rooted in the supernatural, effectively exposing the humanity of each fabricated character as they become consumed (figuratively and metaphorically) by the house in which they live.
You can stream The house on Netflix, but you might want your kids to sit out this movie.