House

1977 ‘ハウス’ Directed by Nobuhiko Ōbayashi

Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip to the country to visit her aunt at their ancestral house. She invites her six friends, Prof, Melody, Mac, Fantasy, Kung Fu, and Sweet, to join her. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.

Kimiko Ikegami Miki Jinbo Ai Matsubara Mieko Satoh Eriko Tanaka Masayo Miyako Kiyohiko Ozaki Saho Sasazawa Asei Kobayashi Tomokazu Miura Fumi Dan Godiego Haruko Wanibuchi Yôko Minamida Kazuo Satsuya Chigumi Ôbayashi Kiyoko Tsuji Shôichi Hirose Yasumasa Ônishi Mitsutoshi Ishigami Kumiko Ohba

Alternative Titles

Hausu, Дом

comedy fantasy horror

88 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by claire ❤️ diane ★★★★★ 38

Sixty in September: 10/60
There are so many things to be fascinated by in this beautiful, wild movie, but two things really stick out to me. Obayashi talks about them in the interview on the Criterion materials:
One is the war and the atomic bombings. Obayashi is originally from Hiroshima. He says, quietly and candidly, that most his friends didn't survive the bombings, as a child. The second is Obayashi's sense of how children view and experience the world. He talks about their easy attraction to the strange and mysterious. Where, he says, adults see Jaws and might think for the next movie, substituting bears for the monster, his daughter conjured a kaleidoscope of subconscious fears and fantasies that were…
Review by Matt Singer ★★★★ 2

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

You will believe a teenage girl can be eaten by a piano.
Review by brat pitt ★★★★½ 7

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

House is the perfect mix of chaotic & calculated. the coloring & collage effects may seem absurd, but the amount of time & effort the filmmakers put into creating each frame argues that nothing is absurd, even dreams.
i've always been a sucker for films that accurately portray the world of dreams (david lynch's entire filmography!!!), and House is no exception, as it's partially based off of director Ôbayashi's 10-year-old daughter's nightmares -- she even has a writing credit. in the documentary Constructing a House, Ôbayashi explains that adults "only think about things they understand ... everything stays on that boring human level" while "children can come up with things that can't be explained." view this film through the lens of an imaginative…
Review by Hollie Horror ★★★★★ 11

I once called in to work so I could drive two hours from where I was living at the time to watch Hausu at the Dryden Theater in Rochester, New York, it was worth the mileage & reprimand.
There is nothing I can write about this movie that would do it justice, you just have to experience it for yourself and understand that it deserves your undivided attention, don't look away for a second because every single frame is magic.
Review by Karsten Runquist ★★★★ 3

So they just kinda said "fuck it" and made this, huh? I mean hey, it worked!
Review by maria ★★★★ 13

how high should you be to make something like this and can i have some
Review by Lucy ★★★★½ 4

i might be kinda drunk right now but honestly i think that only made this better
Review by Taylor Williams ★★★★★ 10

To think this and Suspiria came out the same year
Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★½ 16

I tried to watch this seven years ago when I was thirteen or fourteen, and simply could not handle it. I stopped watching about fifteen minutes in, unsure of what I had just seen. I had heard that it was an awesome and brilliant film, but was merely too young, or maybe too unknowledgeable at the time, to understand its eccentricity or humor. Tonight I finally revisited this film, and I can safely say that I think it's brilliant. I have yet to read any analyses of Hausu, but to me, this is Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's attempt to re-create the madness and surreality of war (most likely WWII), and the effect that it had on his home country through the boundlessly…
Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 3

If one film in the history of cinema could be classified as a certifiably insane piece of art, House would be that film.
It's just bonkers and batshit crazy for 88 minutes. No more, no less.
However, this film has a man who sells Watermelons. Do you need anything else in a piece of cinema?
Review by Sally Jane Black ★★★★★ 7

For me, one of the most impressive things a movie can do is show me something I cannot possibly see in real life. This is not simply a matter of the supernatural; there are so many things I will never seen even in the natural universe. Instead, this is a matter of even simple things, like Tsai Ming Liang's ability to capture images from angles I wouldn't ever think to look at things from or Jess Franco's use of European locales that I probably won't ever visit. They're the reason to engage with fiction, to find new ways to see and understand the world, ideas, or people. Hausu makes use of the art of cinema to simply ignore all convention,…
Review by iana ★★★★★ 3

she IS the blueprint

Recent reviews

Review by Lucas Atkinson ★★★★★

I can't wait to watch this like ten more times.
Review by crab_racoon ★★★★½

I was not on enough drugs for this movie. This movie is BATSHIT. It’s all over the place. The effects are so cool and crazy, I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. It’s a little slow until they get to the HAUSU but then it’s showtime babey. I love all the girls, but especially Kung Fu 😍 Really my only criticisms are that the movie feels a little messy(?) to me. Which isn’t a complete bad thing cuz it kinda just adds to the craziness.
Review by garfieldluvr69 ★★★★★

shit owns what more can I say?
Review by dre 🏳️‍🌈 ★★★★

Sweet and Kung Fu were totally dating
Review by mills4 ★★★★

nice haunted house lady. sure would be a shame if and me and my girls did a bunch of karate in it
Review by itsLorayy ★★★

Pretty colours
Many a visual headache.
Entranced by its theme tune. (Considered it to be my ringtone)
Okay we get it that the house is terrifyingly alive but what the fuck was all that which came after? If your answer was "A Japanese craft, hardly innacessible by us basic westerners" you may be correct.
Review by PaymanJ ★★★★★

Completely bananas, even though I prefer watermelon.
Review by Gaston_az ★★★★½

Siento como que acabo de ver EVIL DEAD 2, DREAMS y Valerie a týden divu, fusionados en una sola película. El resultado? Sublime.
Su exageración es maravillosa y tremendamente efectiva, a cada minuto extirpa carcajadas tras carcajada del espectador mientras que al mismo tiempo logra que se rasque la cabeza y se formen muecas de confusión en su rostro.
La mezcla de imágenes tan potentes y lisergicas, sumando al diseño sonoro tan onírico y la gran variedad de efectos de montaje resultan en algo 100% hipnotico. Además de que los cursis efectos especiales le dan ese toque comido del que se hace tanta gala.
Review by samuelcobble ★★★½

"Leone said my music was better than Morricone's"
Blasphemy will not be tolerated in this house.
Review by AKIRA ★★★★ 2

https://youtu.be/zM2Unpu1-oQ
See it to believe it
Review by Andres Ortiz Sedano ★★★★

This is definitely not everybody's cup of tea. The jumps in the narrative and in the editing might make a lot of people wary, and it's totally understandable.
However, the changes between anime and live action, between real and fantasy, and even between genres, including the score, are what make this surreal horror film wonderful. While everything seems random at some point, it is definitely calculated by Obayashi.
The effects may lack of technical input, which at times may make the film feel cheap or cheesy, but they are definitely ingenious and entertaining. I think at all times we are signaled that the film is fully self aware of this and uses this as an advantage.
Review by Ciaravevo ★★★★★

A masterpiece??? The piano scene???
(The cat is missing from the credits however)