the house movie review 2022

“ The House ” is an animated anthology with an inspired narrative focus, as it tells the history of one building, across time and species. Written by Enda Walsh and directed by different filmmakers for each one, “The House” hones in on the anxieties that come with a home, whether it’s the control that others have over it, the critters inside the walls, or the attachment that could lead to one’s demise. With its rising directors each employing a surreal style, it creates a rich balance of ethereal, existential storytelling with stop-motion animation that’s so detailed and alive you can practically feel it on your fingertips.  

The foundation for the anthology is established by the gothic cloth animation of Emma De Swaef & Marc James Roels , who previously orchestrated the colonization mini-anthology short “This Magnificent Cake!” Their eye for towering sets, intricate stark detail, and characters with tiny eyes and mouths continues here, with a slow burn tale about a family that suffers from a Faustian homeowner bargain. The father Raymond ( Matthew Goode ) makes a deal with “an architect of great renown” that he runs into the woods named Mr. Van Schoonbeek ( Barney Pilling ), who offers them a new mansion and furnishings, for free. The only catch, that they are aware of at least, is that they must give up their current home. Raymond jumps the opportunity as a means of status, to have the nicest house in the area, and make others jealous.  

The family is quickly seduced by the extravagant amenities—the food that appears on massive dining room table, the electricity that provides full illumination. But young daughter Mabel ( Mia Goth ) has more trepidation, as she starts to witness the stranger aspects of its construction, like the zombified workers, who toil in the darkness, and suddenly take away the staircase at night. Things get even stranger, and more visually striking, when the parents are gifted clothes that look a lot like pieces to an ornate couch. It’s an effectively spooky short, one that gets a great deal of intrigue out what is unfolding in the shadows, prefacing the house as a nonsensical trap.  

“The House” doesn’t continue this more horror vibe in the rest of the story, but rather plays upon nightmares of discomfort. In the second short, by Niki Lindroth von Bahr, a rat developer ( Jarvis Cocker ) is trying to prepare the home for showing, fixing it up room by room. In spite of his upbeat attitude and his best intentions, he’s shown to be a pushover, who runs into massive problems along the way, like an infestation of fur beetles that parallels the hopelessness of his pursuit. Even the food that he orders for the showing leads to the wrong order, making him improvise with hot dogs and ramen. Things get especially weird when two intimidating characters express interest, in seeing the room and then staying over night. They placate him with the repeated words that become freaky each time they’re growled: “We are extremely interested in the house.” This short also nonetheless makes space for a grandiose and creepy-crawly musical number.  

Jump to the last chapter, by Paloma Baeza , and the world has gotten even more chaotic but quieter. The house is now marooned on a nondescript body of rising water, surrounded by a pink mist. But the current cat landlord Rosa ( Susan Wokoma ) is obsessed with refurbishing the place, and has a whole plan charted out. Meanwhile her two current tenants, Elias ( Will Sharpe ) and Jen (Helena Bonham Carter), don’t pay rent with money but they do share a type of family bond with each other. As the least bleak of the three shorts, this one shows how the promise of a house has a seductive power, representing a desire to cling to the past even when the floor below you is slowly flooding. It’s also another striking feat of stop-motion animation, with lifelike sets and clothes that practically breathe as the furry characters move.  

“The House” proves to be a consistent anthology, in that it’s always just about the same level of surreal, playful, sadistic, and entertaining. Across its different styles and species, “The House” never holds the audience’s hand when it comes to the poetic flourishes from its mighty gradual pacing; it prefers to be odd, like with the logic behind changing from humans to rats to cats. There might be a little clue in the end credits, as Cocker sings a moody ballad: “This house is … oh, I don’t know what it is.” The stories want you to wander its halls; to notice how things have changed over time, and how they have not.  

Now playing on Netflix.

Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

• Matthew Goode as Raymond
• Mia Goth as Mabel
• Jarvis Cocker as Developer
• Miranda Richardson as Aunt Clarice
• Susan Wokoma as Rosa
• Will Sharpe as Elias
• Helena Bonham-Carter as Jen
• Barney Pilling
• Emma De Swaef
• Marc James Roels
• Niki Lindroth von Bahr
• Paloma Baeza
• Gustavo Santaolalla

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• Netflix’s The House is an unsettling anthology wrapped in cozy stop-motion

A collection of three stories each exploring a different kind of terror

By Andrew Webster , an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

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The House , one of Netflix’s first new releases of the year, is a straightforward concept. It’s a film split into three chapters, each helmed by a different director, all of which explore a different story related to the same sprawling home. What connects each short, aside from the physical house and stop-motion animation, is a creeping sense of dread. The House looks cute, with talking animals and dollhouse-like visuals, but in each story there’s something lurking just beneath the surface; something wrong, unsettling. It could be a recession or a scary creature — but when you put it together the result is an anthology with a trio of distinct, yet clearly connected stories.

The first chapter, directed by Marc James Roels and Emma de Swaef, is an origin story of sorts, which opens with the ominous phrase, “and heard within, a lie is spun.” It’s a story about envy: when visiting relatives mock a young family’s home, the father makes a drunken arrangement with an eccentric architect offering to build them the house of their dreams free of charge. Initially, it’s an almost idyllic scenario; not only is the house huge and beautiful, but food appears as if from nowhere and the lights turn themselves on. But slowly things unravel. One day stairs go missing as the architect decides to rearrange his masterpiece, while zombie-like workers lurk around in silence. Later the architect gifts the parents bizarre clothing to match the decor. It’s hard to tell whether something supernatural is going on or if it’s just a cruel psychological experiment, and it’s all rendered in soft felt that only adds to the surreality.

Later stories move the timeline forward. Chapter two, directed by Niki Lindroth von Bahr, is set in modern times, when a struggling contractor — who is also a mouse — is renovating the house in an attempt to make some big money. Unfortunately, everything seems to go wrong; not only is he investing everything in the project in the midst of a recession, but he has to deal with persistent problems like a mysterious bug infestation. When the house is complete, only one couple bites: and there is something clearly wrong with them. I won’t spoil anything, but this one is worth watching for the final twist alone. The last chapter, helmed by Paloma Baeza, pushes things further into the future when the house is surrounded by a flooded city. However, a young cat, who has converted the home into apartments, refuses to cave to reality and literally tries to wallpaper over her problems while her remaining tenants do what they can to help her move on.

Despite the various circumstances and timelines, in each story the house represents a kind of lifeline for the characters. It’s a chance for a family to inspire jealousy, for a mouse to pull himself out of the crushing weight of debt, and for a cat to slowly build the home of her dreams. The house seems to attract the desperate. What’s most interesting about The House is how each story offers a different riff on this theme. The first two chapters lean into being creepy, particularly their unsettling endings, but while the first is more of a slow-building dread, the second is much more tangible. Meanwhile, the final chapter, despite starting out quite bleak, ends on a surprisingly hopeful note.

The House also features some of the best-looking stop-motion animation you’ll see outside of a Laika film . Each story has a different vibe. The felt characters of chapter one lend it an almost cozy vibe, that makes the darker elements even more stark, while the second chapter is incredibly lifelike and detailed, right down to the little piece of tape covering the webcam on the contractor’s laptop. The final story, meanwhile, is more ethereal, with foggy backdrops that signal something approaching the end of the world. The only constant is the house, which is always recognizable despite superficial changes over the years.

It’s an almost ideal anthology: connected and yet standalone. And, at around 30 minutes each, the chapters are short enough that they don’t overstay their welcome, while also being strange enough to stick with you.

The House streams on Netflix starting January 14th.

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The House Review: A Creepy, Strange, And Ultimately Beautiful Stop-Motion Anthology

What lurks in "The House"? This utterly enchanting, frequently disturbing stop-motion anthology arrives on Netflix today, and while the year just started, I think it just might be the first great movie of 2022. Hyperbole? Perhaps. But when a film comes along from seemingly nowhere and bewitches me so, I get excited. Featuring three wholly unique tales from different directors, "The House" exists in some kind of netherworld. It's like a series of stories trapped in some dusty picture book tucked away on a shelf in a haunted mansion, waiting to be pulled down and read by a crackling fire. It's creepy, strange, and, in the end, altogether lovely. 

Is anything here real? Or a dream? Or a nightmare? It doesn't matter. What matters is the way the film carries you along, gently taking your hand and leading you down dark, ominous corridors. The stop-motion is hypnotic — the characters never quite look real, and they don't have to. The human figures look like strange rag dolls, the fabric of their skin quite noticeable, and the animals look like taxidermy that has suddenly sprung back to life, escaping whatever mounting previously held them. It all sends out a message that anything, literally anything, is possible. It's easy to get enchanted with it all. 

The first story, helmed by Emma de Swaef & Marc James Roels, concerns a poor but seemingly happy family living in a modest cottage sometime in the 1800s. These are the human characters — two parents, and new baby, and a young girl named Mabel (voiced by Mia Goth). After a strange night wandering the woods, the family patriarch, Raymond (Matthew Goode), meets an odd little man, an architect who claims to be a family friend. The next day, the family is made a surprising offer: a brand new house, totally free. Raymond, who bristles at his low standing in life, thinks this is a great idea. So does his wife. Only Mabel seems a bit perturbed by this all.

That uneasy feeling increases when they move into the house — which is built rather quickly, all things considered. The house itself is big and aesthetically pleasing. But the caveats begin almost immediately: when the family tries to move some of their furniture into the home, they're told they have to leave them behind — the architect furnished the house himself, and he wants no outside items. This may sound outlandish but it reminded me of a story I once heard about Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed not just the outsides of his houses but the insides, too, including the furniture, and where it should be placed. The story goes that Wright was prone to randomly show up unannounced at the houses he built and insist on coming in. The owner would oblige. If Wright saw a piece of furniture in a place where he hadn't intended it to be he would immediately push it back into its correct place. Perhaps the story is apocryphal. Perhaps not. 

Once in the house, things get even weirder. The parents seem completely lost in a trance; the staircase to get upstairs suddenly disappeared; and try as he might, Raymond just can't get a fire started in the hearth. And oh yeah, that mysterious architect is fond of appearing seemingly out of nowhere and cackling to himself. Again, only Mabel senses something is amiss here — and she knows she has to get the heck out of the house with her baby sister in tow. 

The rag-doll people who inhabit this story are both real and unreal. Again, it's as if some strange enchantment has been placed over this entire movie, animating the inanimate. Goth's sweet, soft voice performance anchors it all, the lone light shining in the darkness. And things only get weirder from here.

The second story, directed by Niki Lindroth von Bahr, jumps forward to the present day. But instead of human characters, all the characters here are animals, even though they all seem to be occupying the same house. And I don't mean they're little animals scurrying about the floorboards — if this is indeed the same house, that means the creatures who now set foot in it are  huge ; human-sized. Here we meet a rat known only as the Developer (voiced by Jarvis Cocker). He's purchased the house, fixed it up, and plans on flipping it for a windfall. But that's not going to be so easy. For one thing, the house is infested with bugs – bugs who get their own big Busby Berkeley-style musical number beneath the sink.

For another, after inviting people (er, I mean, animals) over for an open house, the Developer finds that one couple that just won't leave. They claim they want to buy the house, and the Developer is thrilled. But as the couple starts taking long baths and ignoring any of the Developer's pleas for payment it becomes clear that they have no intention of exchanging money — they just want to stay. There's a blanket of discomfort enveloping this segment, from the scurrying bugs to the flop-sweaty ways the poor, hapless Developer tries to first sell the house and then tries to get the squatting couple out. The open house sequence is particularly awkward, as the Developer lists all the house's many accouterments to a group of uncaring onlookers. 

While the first two segments lean into horror and the surreal, the final entry in "The House," from Paloma Baeza, finds a glimmer of hope lurking in all that darkness. It's now sometime in the future, and the world has been flooded (Due to climate change, perhaps? We're never really told why). The house still stands, jutting out of an island, seemingly adrift in all that water. And characters still inhabit its walls. The house is now the property of a cat named Rosa (Susan Wokoma), who uses the huge manse as an apartment building. Only two tenants are left — Jen (Helena Bonham Carter) and Elias (Will Sharpe), and the future seems bleak.

But Rosa has hope. She keeps fixing the house up, assuming that any day now more tenants will arrive, and she can turn the building into a profitable venture. She grew up in this house, she says, and she needs money to fix it back up. That's going to be a little difficult since Jen and Elias aren't exactly good at paying their rent. The solution: find new renters who will give Rosa the money she needs to restore the house. But Rosa seems to be borderline delusional — she won't let a little thing like the flooding of the entire world get in her way. Amid this darkly humorous tale is that little ember of hope I mentioned; the sense that, as oppressive and haunting as the house might be, there's still the chance of something better. Of breaking away from foundations and setting sail. 

Each of these tales is rendered with meticulous care. The fur on the animals bristle; firelight dances off the flat, dull, tiny black eyes of the humans; mist rolls in and shrouds it all, and then rolls back out. Even if you fail to connect with the stories, you'll be awed by the artistry of it all; the feeling of magic. And not magic in the sense of some cheap trick pulled out by some two-bit con artist. We're talking real magic here. The type of magic that can make the world feel new again. 

/Film Rating: 9 out of 10

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• Film Review: The House, a film of three chapters on Netflix
• Movie Reviews

• January 22, 2022 /
• Karen Woodham /
• Movie Reviews /

Every so often a film pops up on a streaming network that will grab my attention and this time it was on Netflix with the animated movie in three chapters, The House .

The House is an eccentric dark comedy about a house and the three surreal tales of the individuals who made it their home. An anthology directed by the leading voices in independent stop motion animation: Emma de Swaef and Marc Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr and Paloma Baeza and produced by Nexus Studios.

The movie or TV series whichever way you watch it is a chance to take a strange journey over three wonderfully animated films that each has its own style and story-based around The House .

Chapter One

Starting with Chapter One which is set in the 1800s and not only the introduction to the creation of The House but also to the family that is the first to movie into it, one night impoverished Raymond ( Matthew Goode ) has a chance encounter with a strange character known as the benefactor who offers Raymond and his family the chance to take back their former status, but the family soon learns that their wants and desires don’t always lead them to what they expect.

This first story is not only beautifully animated but it is also rather unnerving with Raymond, his wife Penelope (Claudie Blakey) and their daughter Mabel (Mia Goth) finding that they are in a house that is constantly being changed, the family being given strange gifts and that the benefactor has much more in mind for the family and that their fate is not what they first would have bargained for.

The climax of the story takes you down a strange route and works brilliantly to bring the first story to an end.

There is some great voice acting in this first chapter including Mark Heap as Mr Thomas who is the benefactor’s contact for the family, plus listen out for Stephanie Cole and Miranda Richardson.

Chapter Two

For the second chapter, we are brought forward to the present day, now a harassed property developer (voiced by Jarvis Cocker ) is refurbing The House to get it on the market for a quick turnaround, however, some strange and rather eerie guests have other plans for the property and things don’t go to plan as the developer goes on a personal transformation.

Again this is another wonderfully animated section, I love that the main character is a Rat and when you look deep into the story you see that it’s very much a “Rat Race” and that no matter what you do, there always seems to be a battle with something else, the change in the Cocker’s character is wonderfully done throughout, but be warned if you don’t like creepy-crawlies as there are some wonderfully animated ones in this chapter.

Chapter Three

We move forward to the future of The House for chapter three, the world is now flooded and the house is now standing on a small piece of land with all the floodwaters surrounding it, the house is now owned by Rosa (Susan Wokoma) who rents out rooms to Jen ( Helena Bonham Carter ) and Elias (Will Sharpe). Rosa is trying her best to restore the house, but with the lack of financial rent from her tenants her frustrations are rising, very much like the floodwaters.

One day a stranger arrives, brilliantly voiced by Paul Kaye , he sets up a tent outside and brings his new-age wisdom to Rosa, Jen and Elias, although Rosa isn’t interested in what Cosmos (Kaye) has to say and the help that he may be offering her.

The animation is again wonderful to watch in Chapter Three and after the rodent world of the previous chapter the cast for this chapter are cats, it’s a joy to watch and I think that this chapter and the first are my favourites of the three.

The House is certainly a well put together production, as I mentioned earlier the animation throughout is a joy to watch and the stories, although a little weird at first, are ones that really have you thinking as they move along. It’s fantastic to see films like this and film certainly is something that you should check out if you have Netflix.

Images courtesy of Netflix.

Taking a journey across the years with The House

Movie title: The House

Movie description: Across different eras, a poor family, an anxious developer and a fed-up landlady become tied to the same mysterious house in this animated dark comedy.

Date published: January 22, 2022

Country: UK

Duration: 1h 37m

Director(s): Emma De Swaef, Marc James Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Paloma Baeza

Genre: Animation, Comedy, Drama

Karen Woodham is the founder and owner of the Blazing Minds. She is also a Cinema reviewer and works with RealD 3D reviewing the latest 3D releases and IMAX, she has also had several articles published in various publications including the first edition of SFW Magazine. In 2015 she became an Award Winning Blogger and also has her website listed as one of the UK’s Top 10 Film Blogs.

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The House Movie Review: A Kafkaesque Nightmare!

Rating: ( 3.5 / 5).

This stop-motion animated dark comedy anthology film involving a house through different eras, and the arresting allure it possesses, is Kafkaesque in the truest sense. Presented by three different sets of directors and written for the screen by Enda Walsh, The House succeeds in keeping you riveted from start to finish. The strange, inexplicable power this large structure has on its inhabitants seeps into the viewing experience, making you question reality as much as the animated characters on screen. Gustavo Santaolalla’s intensely crafted music lends an eerie feel to the premise of the anthology. It is rare for an inanimate object to be the central character in a story, but the film pushes its title to the limit, with the house and its looming presence being the glue that connects all narratives. Despite being set in vastly different eras, the structure weighs heavily down on the hearts and minds of its occupants, and yet, why they feel such an attachment to it is never really explored or understood. The shorts offer no clear resolution, making this surrealist feature set in an undefined past, present, and future, all the more odd.

Director – Emma de Swaef, Marc James Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Paloma Baeza Cast – Mia Goth, Matthew Goode, Claudie Blakley, Jarvis Cocker, Susan Wokoma, Helena Bonham Carter, Paul Kaye, Will Sharpe  Streaming On – Netflix  Story 1 , directed by Emma de Swaef and Marc James Roels, features an impoverished household from the past. Raymond and Penelope have two daughters in nine-year-old Mabel (Mia Goth) and her baby sister, Isobel. They live in a dilapidated house in want of refurbishment. One night, a drunk Raymond signs the deal of a lifetime with an elusive architect. According to the agreement, the family must move to a new, grand house adjacent to their current premises, at no cost. The couple exhibits an intense fascination for the palatial place, but Mabel finds the goings-on inexplicable; daily modifications happen at the behest of the faceless architect, sumptuous feasts appear magically at mealtimes despite the appearance of no staff.

Set in the present day, presumably, Story 2 , directed by Niki Lindroth von Bahr has an anthropomorphic rat as a developer in the process of selling the same house. He undertakes all the restoration work himself, which includes a major bug infestation. He constantly calls someone to share his frustrations. When the said day of viewing for prospective buyers arrives, not everything goes to plan. He spots an oddly-shaped couple hanging back, expressing much interest in the place. But try as he might, he isn’t able to get down to brass tacks with them; they refuse to leave, always mumbling about the property and requesting him for tea. 

The final short in the anthology (directed by Paloma Baeza) alludes to an apocalyptic world where climate change has run rampant, with most structures underwater from a massive flood. One of the last remaining properties that hasn't been swept up by the deluge is the proverbial house. The latest landlady is a cat named Rosa (Susan Wokoma); she has two tenants – Jen and Elias. The former pays rent in semiprecious stones and the latter in fish. One of Rosa’s foremost wishes is to bring out the house’s true potential, but a full restoration requires something she doesn’t have: money. The attachment she feels for the structure and her inability to let go of it at any cost are brought into question with the arrival of Cosmos, Jen’s carefree, bohemian spirit partner.

One of the recurring motifs of this stop-motion animated anthology is that of restoration and rebirth. In every timeline, we see the evolution of the inanimate house by either work being undertaken for its benefit or plans proposed for the future. The first narrative brings out the Kafkaesque absurdity of the story extremely well, giving the structure a mind of its own, so to speak. Even the bug infestation in the second story could well be a nod to The Metamorphosis . The claustrophobia of the first story isn’t quite replicated in the other two, nor is the lingering feeling of unease; several moments from Short 1 make you feel that the rooms are closing in on you and that someone is always watching. All three films in the anthology maintain an arresting strangeness, though, but the sheer eeriness associated with Mabel and her parents’ existence in a Doll House type atmosphere isn’t recreated. The third short, with its happy ending scenario, undermines the overall sense of the narrative thus far too. A tremendous OST accentuates the weird, the unsaid, the unknown, and the inexplicable to give weight to this highly arresting and experimental story with an odd house at the centre. The theme of attachment to a physical structure (its inanimate nature, notwithstanding) is another intriguing exploration put forth by the makers.  

Netflix’s The House is like a Wes Anderson animation gone horrifyingly wrong

An early candidate for the weirdest film of the year is Netflix’s trippy stop-motion animated feature, which tells three wacked-out stories set in the same building.

The House (2022)

The stop-motion animation in Netflix’s new, dark, horror-ish triptych is different and unusual, even by this genre’s strange standards. The second two segments (each clock in at around half an hour) feel like bizarro Wes Anderson productions, friendly to look at but with a chillingly domestic sinisterness behind the cuteness: Fantastic Mr Fox or Isle of Dogs by way of Polanski’s apartment trilogy . The first—man, the first—is pretty damn freaky, with stuffed doll-like characters I wanted to snatch up and throw on a bonfire, in order to watch their craggy fabric faces burn and the demons inside leak out of them, coiling into screams of smoke.

The directors of this initial story, Belgium duo Marc James Roels and Emma de Swaef, configure a ghastly aesthetic mostly through character design. The eyes and mouths of the principal characters, a family of four, are very small, which has an amplifying effect on the mass of skin around them—creating big fleshy faces swollen in nothingness. It’s distracting, unsettling, eerie. There’s also the unnaturalness of stop-motion itself, which even if executed smoothly is a little jerky and stiff-limbed: the Frankenstein’s monster of animated techniques, imitating life with an unshakable feeling of deathliness.

That’s before the horror narrative elements even kick in, which revolve around a poor family of four who are made an offer by an eccentric architect, whose representative explains the deal: they get to relocate into a beautiful new mansion, built specially for them, on the proviso that once they move they never return. They do it—because plot, because MacGuffin, because…free rent! Funny things happen in said mansion, the little girl Mabel (voice of Mia Goth) before long commenting that she hates the place, wishing “we’d never left our home.”

It’s too late, of course, the family having crossed a threshold, their former life but a memory. This segment—the best and by far the eeriest—effectively builds the feeling that something isn’t quite right before spilling into the domain of something’s is very wrong , with notes of Kafka and Buñuel. The film’s very aesthetic is spooked, weeping awfulness, with a smattering of unsettling images—from the aforementioned character design to metaphor-fuelled individual compositions, such as a doll’s house burning in a fire. Subtle it ain’t, but it definitely evokes disquieting ambience.

The second segment (helmed by Swedish animator Niki Lindroth von Bahr) revolves around rats, literally not metaphorically—switching to that more Andersonian aesthetic and a talking animals world. The protagonist (voiced by Jarvis Cocker) is renovating his house (the same house as in the first story, at a later time) in the hope of flipping it to a cashed-up buyer. He has two big problems: the place is infested with fur beetles and there’s little interest in the property. A strange couple are “extremely interested,” one of them says, but things get weird when they inspect the place, move in, then don’t move out. The mood is still cryptic, like the first story, but less reliant on recognisable horror genre rhythms.

Ditto for the third (directed by Paloma Baeza), which is more of a black comedy, focusing on a fed-up feline landlord (voiced by Susan Wokoma) who is trying to repair the now broken-down property, as well as attempting to collect rent from two flaky tenants, one of whom has a flippy-dippy lover who drops lines such as “what is money but some physical denomination of coin and note?” Her response is basically: dude, pay up. With the city around the building now flooded, the narrative has a faintly apocalyptic whiff, but is more interested in the idea of letting go rather than rebuilding.

All three segments match the concept of a broken house with a broken life, arguing there is something in the walls, ceilings, floors, materials of a property that can reflect aspects of a psyche. None of it is amazing viewing, neither the cryptic elements nor the atmosphere excelling to gooseflesh-raising temperatures. But it’s entertaining, slight and odd, and configured with intense thoughtfulness. As an overall experience, The House may recede in the memory—but some of its visions are likely to stay with you. Like, unfortunately, those terrible, swollen, fleshy faces from the first story, which I long to see reduced to ash.

• stop-motion

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