In This house...

Before We get started I wanna make one thing very clear. If you are at all interested in this movie I not only think you should watch it first before reading on but I feel it is important you do. This movie is one of those “Less you know the better” kind of movie. I’m gonna embed in here the original trailer for this movie, You can watch the full thing on SHUDDER if streaming is your biz and if you prefer something more physical you can get it at online retailers like best Buy or Amazon, obviously I implore you to find local options too if at all possible but either way I know this isn’t something I’ve brought up before, I moderately believe that some of the movies I review either being out of print or whatever means that I don’t expect you to have seen the movie in question but that it’d be beneficial to the reader to have. This is the first time I feel that it’s important to actually have seen this before hand... That all said if you still have no interest in actually watching this movie after that tirade or even after the trailer below, carry on as you wish.

Seriously

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Seriously 〰️

Spoilers Below

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Spoilers Below 〰️

In This House...

“I don’t think I’ve seen a movie that has so viscerally distressing...”
~My first words after the credits

I honestly don’t know where to even start.
Do I even need to recap the events? There’s not much really to talk about deeply. Am I suppose to theorize on about the ending? I suppose we can work our way through all of that.

Ok so what happened...

There’s very little tangible pieces of this movie’s “plot,” we have a small introduction to our setting through many static shots of the house we will be spending this nightmare in and shortly after it appears a child has taken a fall and the father /the sole parent/ races down stairs to take the child, Kevin, to the hospital. After returning to the house and overhearing on the phone that Kevin didn’t even need stitches and should be fine, the nightmare starts. Kaylee, Kevin’s sister, gets up from using the restroom /maybe?/ and notices that their father is missing, and so she wakes up Kevin and the two of them investigate, doors and windows are gone, the phone doesn’t seem to work, they try to call a phone number and after that doesn’t work you can hear a certain 3 digit number called repeatedly to no avail...they are cut off from the outside world...all they have is this house and a television of old cartoons on VHS, The two children decide to sleep downstairs for the “night.” After they start their cycle of wake up, watch cartoons, play with toys, and sleep. the haze is broken up by a loud noise. Before we can question if that is a noise for US or for them Kevin asks “What was that.” It has become upsettingly clear that one thing is the case, everything is as the world is, the movie is more or less a direct experience shown to us...for better or for worse.

It becomes very obvious that in due time the noises are caused by an entity that I will be referring to from now on as the voice. The Voice might be one of the most sadistic and twisted forces in modern horror. But we’ll get there, for now lets continue with what The Voice does with Kaylee and Kevin. After some more poltergeist-esc noises are heard, the children notice one of the dining room chairs affixed to the ceiling, one of them says in whisper “I think we should be quiet...”
this is only the beginning...

***“She said she wanted her mom and dad. So I took her mouth away.”***

after they become resettled the voice decides to also take more away, the doors and windows weren’t enough, and they take away the downstairs toilet. This temporarily forces the children upstairs as Kevin is told to quickly use the master bathroom and Kaylee keeps watch. She wanders into one of their bedrooms, which they haven’t been in for quite some time, and is scared stiff in place at staring at a doll being held in the air by something. Her brother scares her on accident by tapping her on the shoulder. She will later ask him if he saw anything upstairs and he’d be unsure of what she’s asking. The Voice will speak to Kaylee to “come upstairs” where she will be confronted by something she at first thinks is her father, but then potentially shifts to her mother, and again into something else. After returning to the downstairs she will ask Kevin to help her move the couch in front of the passageway that leads upstairs. This, among other transgressions will enrage the voice, this will lead to Kaylee asking Kevin if everything is okay and that she feels weird. We are then flashed for a moment a view of Kaylee...her eyes and mouth smoothed over with skin.

It is clear from this moment that the gloves are off and the voice is no longer playing except by its own rules.

Kaylee being now more or less out of the picture for now, due to her recent blindness and difficulty speaking Kevin is now left alone with the Voice. It should be said that Kaylee is six, and Kevin is 4 years old. Kevin’s more or less ignorance of the voice’s actions can be tied to this note that he is far too innocent to really take note of the terror like Kaylee was able to. We enter a lull in the movie’s rising action. Kaylee is seemingly not present in a meaningful way, and Kevin is asleep. With all this time on their hands the voice starts to learn how to play, taking the toys and affixing them onto the walls, watching the cartoons and reversing the part where a cartoon rabbit makes itself disappear over and over and over again.
It isn’t until the voice lets out by far the worst line in the whole movie...

“put the knife in your eye”

Screams ring out. Splatters are seen in the cold blue light. and suddenly the phone is working.
The injured four year old makes the ever important 911 call and explains that he’s four years old, injured on a knife, and needs help. The operator lets Kevin know adults are on the way and that he needs to stay on the line with them, and after asking why he’s whispering the call is cut and the phone is turned into the most fucked up horror icon I’ve been forced to experience in a long time. Kevin asks how the voice can do that to which the voice explains that it can do anything. The voice takes Kevin to the upstairs and shows him a hallway filled with Kevin’s toy and an upside down doll house. We are shown the text 572 days, put face to face with the avatar of the voice, and afterwards are shown Kevin and Kaylee’s childhood photos except Kaylee has no eyes or mouth, and Kevin is missing his head. After this we are shown one last final sadistic show of power by the voice by mutilating Kevin so much blood is shed across the floor over, and over, and over, and over rewinding his pain and torment just as it did the cartoon before. Kevin is seemingly alive afterwards, asks the voice if they could watch something happy, the voice tells Kevin to sleep and remains silent when Kevin asks it what it’s name is.

Theory Time.

So there’s a lot to unpack here. From what are the themes of this to what the hell the voice represents or what does 572 days means. For me if you engage with the movie purely on a literal level there’s not a huge amount of stuff going on, it’s a long form torment of children who are too young to understand what is happening just that it is happening. With 572 days

Skinamarink