YMMV / The House (2022)

• Awesome Music: "This House Is..." serves as the song played over the end credits, and whilst it starts out very downcast and almost sinister, by the end it's become more jovial and energetic, especially as the lyrics begin to refer to the House as nothing but a "collection of bricks". It can be inferred as this being reflective of the rare moments when the protagonists are able to overcome their obsession with material wealth and greed which the House represents and seeing the House for what it really is; just an object.
• Accidental Aesop: While the primary message of all three stories is the dangers of greed, materialism, and obsession, the second story specifically may be seen as an allegory of the mistreatment of those with mental health issues.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Towards the end of Chapter 2, the Developer trips over his printer and bangs his head... and while he's lying stunned on the cellar floor, all the beetles and larvae in the House appear before him in a disturbingly hilarious Busby Berkeley Number while he stares dumbstruck. It comes out of nowhere, is never mentioned again, and doesn't seem to have much relevance to the plot but it does hint to the Developer's further deteriorating mental state.
• Complete Monster ("And heard within, a lie is spun"): Van Schoonbeek is an architect who seemingly takes pity on a poor family and lets them live in a luxurious house free of charge. Van Schoonbeek actually intends to corrupt, humiliate, and eventually kill them. He makes the parents materialistic and negligent of the daughters, then dresses them in ridiculous costumes, then has them burn their treasured possessions, and finally transforms them into furniture and burns them alive. The girls don't fall for the house's allure, so Van Schoonbeek demoralizes them by showing what they've lost, then traps them in the upper levels by removing the stairs, seemingly intending to starve them to death. This doesn't work, but they're almost burned to death, escaping only thanks to one of their parents being curtains that slides them out of the house. Besides this, Van Schoonbeek hired an actor, "Thomas", who acts as his emissary and whom he tortures to the point of drunken stupor; is implied to have made the family poor in the first place as he was a "friend" to Raymond's father; and his evil lingers on centuries later as the house causes misery to both the developer and Rosa.
• Funny Moments:
  • The Developer celebrating his renovation of the House by playing Lapdance by N.E.R.D. and scatting along with the music. It's just so ridiculous, and even more given that the Developer clearly doesn't seem to realize just how silly he looks and sounds.
  • While on the phone, he can be seen dunking a bar of chocolate in his glass of wine. Also, hungrily gnawing on the chocolate like a real rat would.
  • While disposing of all the cardboard boxes in the backyard, the Developer finds out the hard way why Burn Baby Burn is a bad idea: on top of having trouble getting the match to light, he also ends up scorching a patch of his facial fur - and doesn't notice until right before the viewing is set to begin.
  • The Developer eventually discovers that, instead of the champagne and canapes he was hoping to serve his guests at the viewing, the supermarket has delivered an order consisting of instant noodles, energy drinks, hot dogs, and other junk food. Rather than just not serving food and drink, he doubles down: neon-green energy drink is served in champagne flutes and the various junk foods are artfully arranged into canapes.
    • On that note, the demonstration of the fancy rotisserie oven. Since the Developer doesn't have a chicken to cook in it, he resorted to using the one piece of meat he had on standby: two hot dogs. We then get a hilarious close-up of the two lonely-looking sausages rotating inside... and then one of them slides off the rotisserie prongs and flops limply to the floor.
  • The abovementioned Big-Lipped Alligator Moment swings wildly between being disturbing, hilarious, and terrifying, in no small part due to the fact that the beetles not only dance, but sing and even blow kisses.
  • The Developer's ringtone, as heard when he accidentally poisons himself and winds up hospital: it's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, but performed via barking dogs and caterwauling cats. Quite apart from providing hilarious contrast to the Developer being frantically wheeled through a hospital, it continues ringing while the Developer lies catatonic in bed until it vibrates off his bedside table and breaks.
• Jerkass Woobie: The rat protagonist of the second story is ambiguously portrayed as deserving his misery, being the butt of several jokes and having less overtly sympathetic scenes, especially since he begins the story by laying off his construction crew for the sake of Cutting Corners; plus, it turns out he's been harassing his dentist with unwanted advances for days on end - and doesn't seem to realize that this is not acceptable behaviour. In spite of this, it's hard to not feel some sympathy given that he comes across as put-upon and out of his depth rather than genuinely mean-spirited, especially given the sheer hard work he goes through to try to stave off poverty only to fail so miserably at the end.
• Squick: Anyone with an aversion to bugs will understandably be grossed out by seeing them constantly in the second story, especially the scenes where they end up swarming all over the Developer's food and drink.
• Ugly Cute: The bugs in Chapter II can be quite unsettling to see crawling around, but when they do a big elaborate dance sequence they almost look adorable.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The film is meticulously stop-motion animated, which is both gorgeous on its own and contributes to the sense of creepiness. Of particular note is the dance sequence in chapter II with dozens of individually animated bugs.