The House (2022) directed by: Emma de Swaef, Marc James Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr, and Paloma Baeza

 

The House is a stop motion film presented on Netflix which tells three separate, non-related stories. The unifying element is that all take place in the same house, but in wildly different locals and situations. 

And heard within, a lie is spun

This first story is about a family on hard times offered a newly built home by a mysterious benefactor. It quickly turns to gothic horror and can be interpreted in a number of ways. The characters are sort of fuzzy humans that seem to be made from lint.

The Lost is Truth that can't be Won

This one did not resonate with me much a t all. The characters are anthropogenic mice, the main one being some sort of real estate developer renovating a large house and trying to sell it. There is a bug problem and an open house where an interested couple just doesn't leave and an odd subplot of him making calls to a love interest that goes off in a direction I didn't expect. Grotesque imagery abounds and there is even a really weird dance number... 

Listen again and seek the sun

This was the lightest offering of the three and again the main character is renovating the house but this time the actors are all cats and the house is sinking into a flooded landscape. The two renters don't actually pay rent and the owner simply can't see that the house is almost cause. A new age guru type arrives and turns everything on it's head. overall it's a positive and funny story but the hippy dippy characters are more annoying to me by the end. 

Worth seeing? Sure, the animation is mazing and the voice work well done. The stories were super weird, something normally like, but rambled a little much for me to get too involved. So maybe a B or B- for this one. 

Soul (2020) directed by Peter Docter

Pixar is in top form with this film. Yes the animation is fantastic as it is with all Pixar films but I honestly barely noticed it as the story and characters rightfully took all my attention from start to finish. 

A musician (Joe) dies unexpectedly by falling into a manhole on the day of his big break to join a legendary jazz artist in her band and dies. That is the start of the story. On his way to the great beyond, he refuses to go there and leaps into space only to find himself in a place where souls are before they are born. He is mistaken for someone else and is charged with helping a reticent (to say the least) pre-born to find its purpose so it can go to earth. Joe uses them to sneak back to earth but he ends up n a cat while the other (22) ends up in his body. The film then turns to them trying to get Joe to his gig on time and back to his his own body. 

One thing I loved about this film was the design of the characters. There is often a tendency to try for "realism" in modern animations and this goes the opposite direction and avoid all the uncanny valley pitfalls and distraction "realism" can burden an animated film with.  Some compare this to another Pixar film "Inside Out" but it's truly it's own thing and a very mature project with problems dealt with a way anyone can understand. 

I don't think it's my favourite movie even in Pixar's history but I really appreciated the risks it took by making something so thought provoking and adult in nature. I really does not seem to be aimed at kids at all, in very good way. The end is open to interpretation, we are not sure what direction Joe is heading and that makes the film point... it's not what he ends up doing, it's how he ends up doing it and why.