PLOT SUMMARY: Lily is a nurse who goes to take care of her patient Iris at her mansion. To her horror she discovers the mansion is haunted.
As a writer, sometimes it's hard to find inspiration. It's hard to get in the "zone" where a writer must simply let themselves immerse in a story and forget about the rest of the world.
Now wouldn't it be easy to simply report an incident and turn it into a book?
I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE Movie Plot
After a pretty boring monologue, live-in nurse Lily is introduced. She's not required to wear white or maybe even her uniform but she wears it anyway.
She has come to stay in a mansion to take care of horror writer Iris Blum.
Lily has pretty much nothing to do all day and so come night, she uses the phone to make a pretty boring phone call to her sister. The cord goes on forever so Lily wanders off into the kitchen and gets comfortable. It's going to be a long call.
But someone or something in the house isn't too happy with Lily making calls, especially if they are long distance, so while she is talking, someone in the shadows yanks at the cord. Lily is shocked and wonders who doesn't want her to make calls?
The only visitor is Mr Waxcap who is the estate manager. Lily is bored as months pass and the only odd thing that happens on a daily basis is the folding of the carpet at the foot of the stairs. Why does the ghost do that? No idea.
When Mr Waxcap comes to visit again, she asks him why Iris keeps calling her Polly. Mr Waxcap doesn't think it's dementia but the only Polly he knows is the character in one of Iris' stories "The Lady Behind the Walls".
Lily tries to inject humorous in the conversation by making a remark about reading horror stories when she has no stomach for it. Mr Waxcap barely blinks at that and can't wait to go away but is too well-mannered to just up and leave.
Lily still gets curious enough to snoop around the house and finds Iris' bookshelf with all her published work. She finds The Lady Behind the Walls and gets comfortable enough to read it at bedtime.
The narrative is boring and the story is about a newly married woman Polly who is made to walk around the house with a blindfold while her husband watches.
Why does her husband like to do that? No idea. Maybe he's hoping his wife bumps her head and he is spared from what he intends to do with her later?
Lily notices mold on the wall near the staircase and complains to Mr Waxcap about it who isn't too concerned. Later in the kitchen, Lily notices the same mold growing on her hands and arms. She raises her arms and they are now bloated. She is shocked when she is distracted. When she looks back, the mold on her skin is gone.
Afterwards Lily does a bit more Detective work and finds an old cardboard box hidden in a closet. It has the same sort of mold on it too. She quickly puts it on her bed because it's okay to place moldy things on places where one sleeps.
Inside she finds handwritten pages, again with streaks of mold on it. She touches them without a care. When she reads them she begins to believe that Iris' fiction novel may not be fictional at all.
I AM THE PRETTY LITTLE THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE Ending Explained with Spoilers!
A flashback shows Polly still roaming around with a blindfold around the house when she comes across the same wall that is moldy in present time. She touches it and feels the boards missing. She removes the blindfold just in time to see her husband come at her with an axe. He kills her and stuffs her body inside the wall, hence: Lady in the Walls.
When Lily goes to talk to a confused Iris about it, she screams about Polly betraying her and then tells her everything pretty eventually rots and Lily will too. Lily cries and walks away when she hears a peculiar sound. She goes downstairs and sees Polly's ghost walking towards her. Lily immediately gets a heart attack and collapses.
The next day, the plumber comes to look at the mold and receives no reply. He leaves. Days later Mr Waxcap comes and enters the house. The police and ambulance are called.
Mr Waxcap has apparently found the bodies of both Lily and Iris. He too drives away and as per Iris' will, the house has to go to a budding horror writer.
Some time later, a family moves in and Lily peeks out the window at them. Now she's the pretty little thing who lives in the house and who died a month before her birthday.
The movie was painfully dull and the narration sleep-inducing.
As always things are never explained. Why did Polly's husband kill her? Did Polly's ghost visit Iris and tell her the story but left out the ending which is why Iris felt betrayed that her book didn't have a proper ending too? Was the ending supposed to be about her husband?
And just which publisher agrees to publish a book with no proper ending? Was it self-published then?
And of course, who kept folding the corner of the carpet by the staircase?
Unfortunately we will never know why Polly's ghost did that.
Scare scale: 1.5/5
Folk song “Pretty Polly” is apparently the driving force behind the story of Polly in the movie, and is what’s playing on the cassette tapes in the movie. Also, it’s e wondered if Lilly actually died from seeing the ghost, or if the black mold toxicity is what actually killed her, and when she was dying she saw Pollys’ ghost because she’s crossed to the other realm. Another interesting thought is whether or not it was Pollys’ ghost that told her the original details of her death, or if it was actually Lilys’ ghost; at the end we see Lilly watching Ms. Blum type. This may be why Ms. Blum kept calling her Polly. When you do a little digging, it really is a good movie.
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