Hello, everyone. I'm Robbie Darby, and this is Zero Finesse, the podcast where it pains everything. Welcome. Today, I'm joined by Megan Dannick to discuss House, the Japanese film from 1977.
And what a film it is. We talk about pianos eating people, jars full of teeth with mouths, the insane amount of tonal whiplash, the man who turns into bananas, and try and art darnness to figure out what this movie is. I went into the film blind, and I encourage you to do the same before you listen to this podcast. It's worth it.
It was a great chat with Megan on today's discussion. Hello, everyone. I'm here once again. Well, wait a minute, wait.
Megan Dannick? She's back? I'm back. Get students back.
Back and back. Oh, Eminem, everyone. Everyone's favorite. Slim Shady.
Yes. He's here. Are you the real? Are you the real Slim Shady?
No. Oh, okay. How are you, Megan? I'm just imitating.
I'm good. How are you, Robbie? I'm fantastic. I'll make the same joke I did when I recorded earlier, is just constantly reloading 538 over and over again.
See if the number moves just a little bit. So that's healthy. We're not talking about terrible politics, though. We're talking about spooky movies.
Spooky movies. Well... How about weird movies? Uh, yeah, yeah.
Weird is a good... I'm not gonna... Okay. We're talking about...
Delightfully weird movies. That's... We're gonna talk about that, okay? We're gonna talk about delightful.
What that word means, okay? All right. I don't know about the... Okay.
What this movie is. We're talking about House, Hausu, depending on if you are someone who wants to stick to the Japanese. There's also American House. That was in the 80s at some point.
Also a delightful movie. Never seen it. I know there's a House 2 and a House 3 and a House 4. You need to see House.
Oh, maybe we should have watched House and House. I just watched House. I've seen House MD. Does that count?
No, it doesn't. Dr. House? No.
He's delightful. He's a curmudgeon, but he gets things done. Oh, good for him. But that's...
The house... The other house movie is also recommended. It's also good. It has George Wendt in it.
Cheers? TV's George Wendt. TV's Cheers? It's two people.
Yes, of TV's Cheers. He's just Cheers to me. And TV's Fears. He's just Cheers.
He doesn't have a character. He's just Cheers. He's just Cheers. Like Cheers.
He's also... Cheers is also in the show where... In the bad place. But the good place.
Yes. Both of those places are there in that show. I bet you those actors are named Cheers. They're both Cheers.
We're talking about House 1977, directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi. That's my best attempt at that. I... I asked you, let's do...
I said, let's do a spooky movie for Halloween. I did one with your husband, and now I'm doing one with you. You sure did. We did.
Exorcist 3 is great. I love Exorcist 3. So you chose House. You said, what's your house?
And I said, okay, I've never watched it. That sounds perfect. Here's what I knew about House before I watched House. Megan.
Yes. These are the things I knew about House. One... I'm taking notes.
One, it was in the Criterion collection. Correct. Two, it had the cover, the poster that had a kitty cat face on it. Oh, yeah, correct.
The orange cat design that I've seen on... I think I've seen more people wearing a t-shirt of that cat that I've seen on the actual movie poster itself. I think I've just seen many people wearing, like, hip people wearing t-shirts. Hip, in-the-know people, yes.
Yeah, but I knew nothing about this movie. Nothing. Which is so delightful to me. You can never see this movie again for the first time.
That's very true. I would certainly... This applies more than ever. If you've not seen House and you've got this far on this podcast, go watch House first.
Yes. Because our discussion will not... Probably not make any sense, even, unless you watch the movie first, because... Even then, it is debatable.
Yeah. I assumed it was, like, I don't know... I said horror movie, and it is... It is sort of a horror movie, and it's also sort of a fantasy.
Fantasy. Well, for sure, comedy, too. Um... I'm...
Hmm. Perhaps even musical. No. No.
I refuse. Not in the same way as, you know... I like the music. I like the music.
It's interesting, but it is not... This is not a musical. It is... It has music.
I don't know what that... And the closest thing I can think of to compare it to in a weird way, and I think it's the reason why I like it so much, is because it reminds me of The Monkees, the TV show The Monkees. I don't know if you ever watched The Monkees, Robbie. I...
I... No. I know of them. I know that...
Hey, hey. You know, hey, hey, we're the monkeys. Marge Simpson loved The Monkees. I know that.
The Monkees are great. I know Last Train to Clarksville. I'm a fan of Last Train to Clarksville. That's a good song.
Um... They have many... I'm aware of the show was, like, a boy band show. It was, like, The Partridge Family, but for boys, with boys.
All boys. They were a band of boys. This is true. But they had, you know...
They just got into shenanigans, and it had a very... It's sort of like The Monkees cross with, like, an H.R. Puffin stuff kind of, you know, Sid and Marty Krofft kind of... There's nothing you are...
This is all outside of my cultural wheelhouse. Everything you're describing is nothing I've ever seen, which makes this even more confusing, probably. Yeah, this is making me also feel old, so let's redirect the conversation. You're not that much older than me, so it's not...
I... But my cultural touchstones apparently are, so... I hear... This is what I'll tell you about The Monkees.
I associate The Monkees with the part of Nick at Night that I hated and turned off. Oh, no, because The Monkees... Okay, Nick at Night, maybe, but... Or whatever show...
Like, I forget if it was Nick at Night or if it was a similar... I don't know. It was on MTV for a while. I never got into TV.
That's a choice. Well, MTV and... And I think Nickelodeon did play it, but during the day. That's probably was probably where I...
All I remember is going, oh, I'm not watching this. Well... This is a lot of... I was not expecting to talk about The Monkees at all on this podcast, so there we go.
I was trying to... Again, I'm trying to find things that I can kind of place this with in terms of how it... Look and feel. You know what I mean?
The Monkees, you know, very colorful, musical interludes, obviously, because they are a band. You know, use of, like, stop motion and, you know, kind of kooky filming techniques and, you know... It just... If you have seen The Monkees, dear listener out there, that hopefully you get kind of...
You're picking up what I'm putting down. But since Robbie has not, I will stop talking about The Monkees. I mean, you can talk about The Monkees all you want. That's fine.
It's... If it bears a comparison. Maybe we should do a podcast about The Monkees sometime. Put a pin in that.
Put a pin in that. I might ask you if there's anything else ever that you would rather do than The Monkees. But if that has to be... If it has to be The Monkees.
No. I... I look at this, I think, of Argento. I think of Italian horror of the same era, frankly.
Yes. Like, Suspiria. Suspiria came out the same year. Correct.
Yes. Which is another one that I was going to mention too. And it's another one of my favorite horror movies. So...
Suspiria... No. I don't debate about if Suspiria is... The original Suspiria is a horror film.
It is absolutely a horror film. There is certainly a lot of crossover here, but it's also... There is... There is absolutely fantasy.
There is absolutely presence of whimsy and magical realism to a certain extent. Like, the way... It is a ghost story. Yeah.
That's true. It is a ghost story. Yeah. It's not for in the traditional...
In any kind of, at least, American, you know, traditional way, I don't think. It's not... It's interesting, because, you know, I think a lot of times, horror movies are designed to, you know, draw out fear, right? To make you feel a certain way.
Whereas this movie, it's more like a fever dream. I mean, that was... That is one of my questions. Is, what is this film trying to evoke?
What reaction is it going for? What is it trying to pull Look, we're gonna go with it. I think that with all of that happening on the landscape, I don't think it's such a crazy idea to be like, well, 11-year-olds are, you know, kind of driving the market at this point. What do you think?
What kind of a movie would you like to see, kid? You know, and going from there. I just, it just feels like I'm being lied to, and I don't appreciate it. Not that he's, like, the director seems very, I watched some interviews with him, he seems very thoughtful.
He directed, he directed, like, he passed earlier this year. Rest in peace. He directed, looks like 100 movies over his life, and probably gonna end up hunting. I'll probably look and see what they all were, because this is the first or second film in Stars at Hotel.
Some people say it's his first, but IMDb has something else prior. I don't know if that was later added in, or I don't, again. It's just, this film is a lot, because it starts as, there, there is no horror at all at the beginning. Like, there's no, there's no spooky ominous, like, there's the, I guess it starts with a girl being dressed like a witch, and then getting a picture taken.
Gorgeous. And then you get, you get the character names, and they are Gorgeous, Kung Fu, Prof, Fantasy, Mac, and Mac is, she just likes food. Is it McDonald's? Is that what that is?
Or is just Mac is like... Stomach, I think. Like, yeah. I got it.
Sweet and Melody. Those are our girls. They are the victims. The murderers.
They are, they are, they all get killed or, and or possessed. And then there's Auntie, who is effectively the villain. But, and then, but, like, early on, we see the girl, we see Gorgeous. Is Gorgeous his father we see?
And that's his wife, his new wife. Yes. Who Gorgeous doesn't like, because her mom passed, and she doesn't want the dad to have a new one. And so she goes to visit Auntie.
And then, uh, and then, like, all this, it just feels like, it feels like a family drama. Like, it doesn't, a very strange one. Because the girl's named Gorgeous. And all these are, they're just, they're character traits.
That's all their names are. It's just they are, they are stock. One, they have one character trait, and that's all they are. Melody, Melody plays the piano.
You're like, okay, what's going on? She's pretty. Prof wears glasses, and she's a nerd. Now, to be fair, Abby, in many horror movies, there are tropey ass characters.
I mean, why not call a spade a spade? Because, because when you do that, like, immediately. Like, I agree. Like, it's, it, it did two things.
It got my attention, because it's me like, oh, they're just labeling their tropes. Okay. Some respect. I get it.
That's, that's a bold thing to do. But it immediately also tells me that I don't know how to digest the story they're about to tell me. Because normally, in most cases, when you're, even if you are just watching a horror movie, even if you're watching a stock standard tropey horror movie, some, like, Jason 6 or something. Usually creators, writers, directors, they do their best to hide the fact that they have these incredibly tropey characters.
They try and disguise it a little bit. They're rub off the serial numbers. Make it look like, oh no, there is something else here. Even though, even if the character is just, oh, it's the slutty girlfriend that gets murdered 30 minutes into the movie to let you know that there's a slasher around.
You do, you try and go, no, like, hey, hey, audience, no, it's not that, even though that's what it is. But when the movie just starts out with the girl going, Hey, gorgeous. Um, when she said that at first, I'm like, are they a couple? Like I thought that she was like complimenting her at first, her friend.
And then I'm like, oh, that's her name. Her name's Gorgeous and Fantasy. The first thing we meet are Gorgeous and Fantasy. And I'm like, okay, again, she's a...
I kind of love it. It's like, choose your, choose your character. Like, it's a very video game kind of thing. Like, who are you rooting for?
Who's going to make it out alive? That's, I mean, that's, I think I'm also a little resentful that I picked Mac right away and then G Mac gets killed, but she's gonna get a watermelon. Yeah, poor Mac. And excuse me, how does Mac eat so much and yet she is skinny as heck?
I know, they'll say she's chubby. She's not. She's not. Body shaming.
Oh, I don't know if that was like, is that, again, that makes me go, is that part of the joke? Or is that just, they have, they only cast, apparently, TV commercial actresses to do this and they're all attractive. Yeah. I mean, you know, she's got her hair, her haircuts a little, uh, unfortunate.
That's the, oh, her, oh, so it's like a, what, she's the one? Is that the movie? The one where they just, all they do is just give that girl a, they take off her glasses and. Let down the hair and.
Let down the hair and, oh my God. They even say that about Prof. They're like, oh, without your glasses, you're so pretty. She's like, but I can't see without them.
Is that a joke? See, that's the thing. I go, is that a joke? Is that, are them, are they purposely like making fun of these horror tropes, even though a lot of these tropes didn't exist yet, as far as I know.
See, to me, it is kind of tongue in cheek and just hilarious. Like, to me, it's just hilarious that, you know, Sweet, and she gets to the house and she's like, I want to clean. And she's, you know, scrubbing the floors and being like a little maid and stuff like that. I'm like, what teenage girl does that?
And everyone's like, none of them. I mean, there's certainly, I know, I've known people who would have done that. I mean, to help or something, but not, you know. It's, I just, I think it is kind of purposeful.
And I do think it's funny because it's, like you said, it's not like this stuff was just like, oh, this again, you know, this is still early enough on that, that, that kind of a thing is, you know, new or newer. No, they have it. This was, this was 1977. There were no, that wasn't an established, none of these like, like when you look at Scream, Scream took all those tropes and, you know, pointed them out and then kind of subverted them in a lot of different ways.
That was in the mid nineties. This, they did, you know, after like Halloween, which was coming out just about this time as well. That's after that and the glut of slashers in the early eighties, it started codifying a lot of these, I don't know. This isn't really a slasher really, but it does have a lot of those tropes because it's just a bunch of girls getting picked off one at a time.
It's just, it's not some giant monster in a mask. It's a house that eats people sometimes in different ways. Or, or smothers them with mattresses. Or, I don't.
Should we talk about the, the, the, somewhat the framework of this plot? I mean, it's so simple. There is this girl. I talked about her father and her, his new bride.
She goes to visit her aunt, who is Ms. Howell South. I don't know where, I guess out in the country. Out in the country, which speaking of tropes, I mean, one of my favorite ones is that this has the early on creepy gas station guy.
Like the watermelon man. The watermelon man, which is wonderful. It's like, I know who this guy is. I've seen this guy in movies before.
And yeah, he is delightfully weird. Um, oh, and we have to talk about Blanche. Okay, so there is these, and there's, there's gorgeous and her six friends. All of them have their, we already listed all their names.
They, she's taking them to visit this house of her aunt and tagging along is Blanche, the cat, a white poofy cat. Very, a beautiful cat. Yes. Um, who is a constant companion.
And they go to the house and then we find out that the house is possessed by the ghost of her aunt. And her aunt died, I think. Yes. Okay.
And it's her ghost. But her aunt lost her lover in the war, World War II, and he never came home and her spirit now remains in the house and eats girls. Yes. Young girls.
Basically, she is sustaining herself so that she can continue to wait for her long-lost love by, by eating girls. That's it. There's nothing, there's no other plot. Like, really.
There's no other, like, there is a Togo, the boyfriend character who is like, trying to find him, I guess. Yes. Um, and not doing a great job. He just kind of, it's sort of comedy relief The best valid food, hot dogs.
Everyone knows what you're doing. Maybe hot dogs aren't a thing in Japan. Fair. That's a fair.
I... The hot dogs are universal. Everyone knows dog. Everyone gets a hot dog.
Everyone wants a wiener. Yeah, see? Exactly. But here, my other...
This is my other thing. How far out can the house do stuff? How does it turn him into bananas? I know I'm not supposed to think about that, but I do.
You've thought about that a lot. I think it's more... I... I think the power...
That happens... If you think about it, that happens very late into the movie, and the house is already kind of, you know, eaten almost all of them. So maybe the house is at the peak of its power and can extend man turning into banana capabilities beyond... beyond the walls of the property.
I don't know. Okay. This is a good theory as any. I would say maybe reserve your power, house.
You won't have to eat so many children if you just let... Let Goober drive around in his car and then let him go, and you don't have to make him into bananas. But now the house has Gorgeous to kind of be the, you know, protector. Because that's...
That's a piece of the movie that, you know, is a little bit confusing because it's like, is it preying on her or is she kind of becoming the... the witch bride ghost? I thought she was possessed. I did not see it as Gorgeous at all anymore.
I thought it was... I thought it was E.T. again, just basically in her body. Like possessing...
Like E.T. was always... was just a spirit, and this was a chance to become... It's in the same bloodline, and now I can occupy a young, beautiful body again.
That makes sense. Yeah. Well, and it's interesting because there's different shots of her when she's putting on makeup and stuff like that, and it's... It's like, is that her face or is that Auntie's face?
Like, it's very, um... You know, unclear. Unclear. There's certainly nothing else in this film that's unclear.
It's only that. Everything else is crystal clear. I mean, there... I mean, it does it...
Like, the fate of the girls is... aside from Gorgeous herself, the fate of the girls is pretty concrete. Like, they get chewed up and, like, one gets eaten by a piano. Um...
Mac gets... I don't know how she actually dies. She's going to... She's going to get a watermelon and then her head's in the well.
Yes. We don't actually watch... And then she bites a girl's butt. She sure does.
Is that, like... Is that trying to say... Is that, like, implying some sort of attraction for Mac? I don't think it was attraction.
I think she's just always hungry. So that's... That's it. That's the simplest.
It's like, she's hungry, so she goes... So she goes after the butt. Okay. Um...
I mean, maybe. I don't know. She's... I'm not gonna cast dispersions or judgment.
It's just a question because, again, like you just said, all bananas are dicks. Like, it could be just like, oh yeah, Mac was totally a gay, and that's how she showed it, by biting a butt. Maybe. I don't know.
That's what I'm saying. I don't know sometimes. Uh, Gorgeous... I didn't really get any kind of subtext of that kind.
Like, I feel like their relationship, you know, is definitely just very chaste friendship, you know. Yes, they're very pure schoolgirls. Yeah. All of them.
Um... It doesn't help them get... And that's the other part, is like, you know, normally the pure characters are the ones that are safe, but all these characters are technically pretty pure to me. Except for maybe Kung Fu, who just loves killing people with feet.
She just kicks stuff all the time. She's so cool. What? Like...
And she was... Like, she just runs around in her underwear for a while. Like, I don't... It's a sleepover.
I mean... I don't know. What does that mean? It's a sleepover.
Chill out. Wear your underpants. Who cares? It's not just a sleepover.
Her pants get removed when she has to fight logs. Logs are flying at her. She has to karate chop them. That is kind of a funny thing about the movie, is that a lot of really weird shit happens, and...
And it's just kind of like, eh, it's just... There's gotta be an explanation for that. There are literally are logs floating through the air around her. She...
She does crazy kung fu. She does karate. She does martial arts. I don't think they actually...
She saw kung fu. I don't think she's actually doing kung fu. But... No.
She just... She karate chops. She kicks a bunch of logs that are flying through the air. Her...
Her dress is... Flies off at some point. And then she catches it. Like, it's...
Like, it is a kung fu movie. And then... She's like, oh, that must have been an illusion. Like, what?
What do you mean it must have been an illusion? You're not wearing pants! The dress got... Just got knocked off!
You didn't DREAM up the fact that you just had to fight some logs that are flying through the air. Well, I mean, you know, maybe she was like, oh, maybe it was the wind. Your friend's head is twenty feet tall and it's talking to you about the plot. Well...
I don't know. That's... I mean, that's the thing. It's very...
It's all dreamlike. You know, it's not... It is not trying to appeal to any sort of logic. It is...
It is immersive you in just... It's not dreamlike. It is a nightmare. Um...
And that's the other thing you mentioned earlier. Like, you said, oh, it's a comedy. No, I... I don't...
I don't... Maybe if I watched it again, or maybe I watched it... I don't get the joke. I get the joke.
It's just overwhelmed by the horrific imagery. Like, it's not necessarily that it's a horror film, either, because I'm not really scared because they are constantly subverting the horror. Like, there's something terrible happens, and then they cut to a girl's face and she's like cross-eyed and making a goofy... She's like...
And I'm like... It's like a Looney Tunes cartoon. So it's not that I'm... I don't laugh at that and does undercut the tension that they create with the horror, but there's still a...
Like, I don't find a piano eating a girl... I didn't find that funny. I found that terrifying. Therein lies the horror.
Like, I... Like, I guess I... Like, I see the... The, you know, the ridiculousness of it.
It reminds me a lot of also early Peter Jackson. Yeah. Like, Dead Alive. Such a good movie.
Dead Alive is great. And it has... Dead Alive is certainly, I think, more cut and dry. Like, this is a horror comedy.
It certainly is. Like, it doesn't have, like... It's not... This is psychedelic at times, as well.
There's also, like... The landscapes and the way it looks. It's very beautiful, but it is not typical in any way. It feels like...
It feels like any other... The director apparently only worked in commercials before this, and that... It reminds me of... The cat shows.
Yeah, it reminds me of commercials. The old commercials. Yeah. It's interesting, though.
Like, you know, the Wikipedia... The Wikipedia article of Japanese horror films, which, you know, I know is not a very deep reference to make, but it does mention that, like, in Japanese horror overall, haunted houses and family issues are the two big features, the two big, like, tropes, two big concepts that a film will revolve around. So it does have that. And I think the aesthetics of it are just what set it apart.
But again, I say that having not seen a whole lot of, you know, films from Japan. But the aesthetics of it... And it's part of what I just find... I just love about the movie.
And again, why... Oh, gosh. That's why the Monkees reference is so good. I wish you knew how good it was.
I trust... I trust it's the best reference ever. Everyone out there listening right now is like, oh my God, I can't believe... I've never made that connection before, but now she is 100% correct.
Megan is a genius. The Monkees and house are the same thing. And that is why... And that is why I go on your podcast.
No, no. No, I just... Because of that psychedelic kind of thing and because of just, you know, the music and the look of it, it's... It's very...
It's not... The design of it is not a horror movie. It's like a horror movie happening in a... In a children's show.
It's like a horror... It's like if Pee-wee's Playhouse went really off the rails and became a horror movie. That's the kind of vibe. And that's...
And that's weird. It is. It is weird. I'm not arguing that.
That's... There's no argument. This film is incredibly crazy. I was...
It's also what makes it so unexpected, though. I mean, I remember reading about this movie a little bit before I watched it and just, you know, thinking, okay, this sounds interesting. And just... It's so unlike any other horror movie because it's...
I think it comes back to that question. It's like, what Snapcat is now 35 years old. Well, and the cat opens and closes doors. The cat randomly appears at her home, you know, presumably miles and miles away.
The cat is on the train for some reason. The cat's just, you know, it's like a guide, like, you know. No, it's not a guide. That cat is death.
I mean, that's the thing, like the feature it talks about this contrast between the girls, especially that flashback when she's talking about what happened to her aunt, and they're laughing about, they're like, oh, the bomb, it looks like cotton candy. And you're like, oh my God, what are you talking about, you little, these little psychopaths. It's murdered hundreds of thousands of people. And you're like, oh, it looks like cotton candy.
And you're like, okay, I get it. And then they, this is the thing it points out about, you know, you only see the bomb for what, two seconds. You get that overlay of the bomb for a few seconds while they're doing that flashback. And you never see it again, although there are visual references, like the clouds behind them in the landscape sometimes look like mushroom clouds.
Right. But it's pointed out, like, the eyes of the cat, every time someone's going to die, they flash. Flash. And then at the end, it's Gorgeous's eyes that are flashing.
So I like that. And I think it's a, that's a nice subtle touch that I didn't think about the first time I was watching it. And you get, you know, it's paired with the flash of the camera as well. Like that, that flash of light representing the nuclear blasts and that tragedy and that horror that carries with you.
I'm all for it. I like that a lot. It's more the fact that it does, I feel like there's a, I think in my, it's just, again, this is like, it's my personal taste. It'd be like, whenever there's a moment where there's horror, especially in that last 30 minutes or so.
The movie's really short. It's like 88 minutes long. It's a pretty short film. It's a tight, tight 88 minutes.
I don't think it's, I don't think it doesn't, it flies by because things are always happening. It's never boring at all. Yeah. This movie definitely cannot be accused of being boring in any sense of the word.
No, you are, even when you, even if like at worst, you're just confused, but you're, or you're like still like, really, I'm always compelled. I'm always like, okay, what's happening? Why are, okay. There's a, oh no, they pulled up Mac's head.
Oh God. I forgot Mac was even gone. And now her head's came out of the well. Mac can't eat a cheeseburger anymore.
Now she's eating that girl's butt. What's going on? It's more about that, in the last 30 minutes of a horror film, I'm basically just, I want the film to go for broke, go just escalate, escalate, escalate, escalate. I don't want that tension to ever be cut.
I don't want that relief. I want it to push as far as it can until it gets to the climax and then maybe, you know, release in some way, shape, or form, even if it is in the fact that everyone is dead. Which is what the film ultimately does. Yep.
But there's those moments in it where it's like, I, you know, and maybe it feels like Suspiria, like Argento stuff, where it doesn't really shift that tone away from, no, this is a nightmare and all this stuff is terrible. Like it is beautiful, but it's also awful. And this has those moments where it, you know, it's not really concerned about being a horror film. It's, it's not concerned about being any kind of film.
It's concerned about being itself, I guess. Which is beautiful. I love, I love it. I mean, I, I, obviously I love this movie.
Um, and because it is just like, clearly, yeah, it does not. I'm not going to say it doesn't give a shit because I don't think it, it is feeling, you know, like that the viewer is stupid. I think it's just like thinking that everybody's in on the joke and, or the joke in air quotes, like, you know, I just kind of, you're, you, you watch it start to finish and it definitely, you know, has a, it wraps up pretty nicely. You know what I mean?
Like it's, uh, at the very end, you know, you have the, the wife, the new wife or new fiance or whatever of, of, um, Gorgeous's father drives out to the house presumably to, you know, kind of make nice and, um, and, uh, see her. And of course Gorgeous is now like the, basically taking on the mantle of the auntie character and she's there in her, you know, beautiful traditional kind of kimono and it's all very like windswept and backlit and glowing, which is sort of how they introduced that character too. You know, they introduced this new, uh, the stepmother character sort of in that way where you don't really, you don't really get the impression that there's anything like evil lurking under the surface. It's interesting that like all of the sort of evilness, you know, is, is totally on the part of Gorgeous on the part of the, the, you know, I don't know, I wouldn't call her like the heroine of the story, but she's definitely the character that's driving the story.
And that's so interesting to me. Like it's, it's, she's, I don't know, is she an anti-hero? She's not really an anti-hero either. Like.
She's the protagonist. She's the protagonist, but she also then, you know, incinerates her stepmother at the end, which. She's fine. She's fine.
Sure. She's fine. I mean, I think that it is connected to, like, again, again, burn and burning away this, this Uzofer to nothing. And I think that is, you know, that's the stuff I respect the most about the film is the fact that it is when you look at, I would watch it again.
I probably, that's what I'd be looking more closely for, you know, I'm still, I've only seen this one time. Um, but it's the, that, it, I think that's the stuff I respect most about it. It's like, it is very simple at like it's at surface level. It's like, oh, these girls, they're literally named after their character's trait.
They go to a house, they get eaten by the house and Gorgeous is the only one left seemingly possessed by it. And she is left to take care of this house now and then, and kills her stepmother is the final thing we see. But there are, you know, the layers underneath that are the things that I, I think are, I respect the most and puzzling it out. Like, I don't think the film wants you to see her as a hero or an anti-hero or a villain.
Like she is, she's protagonist and antagonist by the end of the film. She's Gorgeous is the protagonist to begin the film and Auntie is the antagonist, but they have become one by the end of the movie. And I don't think the film cared, like, again, I just, like I was talking about, the film doesn't really care about being any certain kind of thing. It only wants to be itself.
And I think it doesn't ascribe, here, you have to feel this way about this character. I think it is used, like it is certainly, I don't think that's Gorgeous killing the stepmother in the end. It is not, and I don't know, it's not Auntie killing the stepmother either. It's both.
Well, yeah, I mean, I don't think it's anti that. I think it's the logical. I mean, for all of the lack of logic in the, in the film, I mean, that's sort of a logical conclusion for the film, you know, like the arc that it takes the, the bananas, not bananas, the bonkers stuff that happens throughout the film is just that it's bonkers. But then it kind of makes sense at the end, you know, like, of course she would be now inhabiting this space and, you know, would kill her stepmother and would, you know, continue on the tradition of the house.
It's almost like a origin story that would be before another scary movie, if that makes any sense. Like the new villain is this, is Gorgeous slashing Auntie. Because to me, it's that's at the end, that's the more, almost the more sinister part, not during the film when these girls are, you know, yes, getting murdered, but it's all very cartoony and strange and, you know, wacky. And it's, it's, it is almost like if you asked, you know, a 10 year old to tell a ghost story, just make it up on the fly.
And this would be stuff that they would talk about. But then at the end, you know, this character who has sort of gone through more of the emotional stuff in the movie, if that makes sense. Like she's, you know, it's her family and she initially kind of initiated the trip in the first place because she was upset. And she's kind of, if this movie could be said to have an emotional center, an emotional core, you know, it's Gorgeous's story.
And then all of this crazy stuff happens. But then at the end, you know, you kind of have this tone, another tone shift, right? Like what you said about the tone matching or not matching the movie at the end I just want other people to see it and absorb it and tell me what they think about it. I appreciate that about things like this movie and this movie.
And it doesn't mean I don't appreciate it, you know, looking deeper into it for what it is and what it's doing, but I just, I love that it exists and that I love that, you know, the text that I got from you this morning was, what the fuck? I watched this over my morning coffee. That's a lot over morning coffee. It's a lot without coffee.
We haven't at all talked about the acting at all either. Or the writing. Yeah. The writing to me is hilarious and the acting is sublime.
Oh wow, sublime, you say. Sublime in that it's just so, I mean, it's interesting to me that it, I don't feel like it's campy, but I think it's just meant to be very like sweet and sincere almost. It feels naive to me. Yeah.