House
For a while now I wanted to rewatch this one in order to finally decide if I want it in my top 4 or not, and now that I've watched it, I really think I do.
House is probably one of the films that most amaze me visually every time I rewatch it. This time around the lighting and colour really stood out for me, which were a refreshing snack after the blandness of Halloween last night. It's a film so rich in its cinematography that you can pick it apart even further with each rewatch, and that makes for a film that you can't ever get bored of.
And yeah, sure, some of the effects are really outdated, but come on, who really cares when you have this much style.
And its narrative is so underrated imo. Yes, we all know how visually stunning and innovative House is, but we aren't talking enough about the pacing and thematic subtext this has. The masterful tone shift the film manages to achieve is unimaginably well-done, because the swift build-up of the cartoonish happy life of the girls before getting to the house for a swift demolishing of all this idealized depiction is just really out-standing, and how this contrast plays with the subtext of romanticized love and grief is really interesting.
Quite like how this cartoonish life of the girls gets destroyed by the horrors of Auntie's house, our concept of a "soulmate" love and the romantization we construct surrounding the promises of a "happy ever after" are completely destroyed by our own unability to sustain this unreal idealization. And in the same way the Auntie, the girls and us are unable to let go of this romantic love, we are also unable to let go of our loved ones to move on with our lives, just like Auntie with her husband or Fantasy with the teacher. It has some seriously great exploration of its themes that isn't nearly talked enough.
It's a unique film that has never been quite replicated, and that gets to me to such a deep level that I think it would be unfair to not place in my top 4.