A House Is Not A Home

The Haunting of Hill House reminded me of some more recent movies today that play and reshape the idea of a house being a home and the security of family. One example in particular is the movie, Thir13en Ghosts. I drew parallels with those because of the malicious and nefarious personality of the house. The houses in both novel and film both shake up the idea of a house being a home, which really plays with fear because home is suppose to be our refuge from the outside and the unknown. Similar to how we analyzed the movie When A Stranger Calls in class, the modern house still has the ability to bring fear by throwing out the details that of a long history, flickering lights, creaky floors, etc. of older houses. The glass house in Thir13en Ghosts brings fear in revealing more than we would want to know or see, and it also functions differently than any home that we are used to. In contrast, I thought it was interesting to compare how the book and the movie have set out to define familial relationships (by blood and with a group of strangers). The older novel plays with that idea more, while the modern film uses the typical idea of a family. I like that aspect of the book because it communicates a different idea that makes it more terrifying because I felt like there was really no real refuge for the characters in Hill House.