Real Estate Photos as Horror Movie Stills: Part 1
Haunted houses and loving to look at them because you are afraid to look at them because of "other stuff" that is about love, fear, and looking.
(All images in this post are courtesy of Z*llow for the purposes of commentary and criticism, which I have to mention because they’re famously butt-headed about this sort of thing.)
A few years ago I wrote a haunted house story, because I have long been obsessed by domestic architecture and now live in a city obsessed with ghosts, too, so it was only a matter of time before I started pursuing both. That particular story involves Haunted Technology, my other favorite supernatural trope, and the image above sat at the center of the mood board I assembled while writing it. I have spent a lot of time looking at this picture and thinking about the bedrooms I have lived in over the years that resembled it.
How does it make you feel? Do you think it’s scary?
Because it looks so much like some of my old bedrooms, intellectually (or whatever) I don’t think it’s scary in the “eww, worn out old stuff” way, though I do think it’s scary in the “get ready to breathe known carcinogens and surprising new allergens while this landlord for sure does not deal with the rat problem” way.
Emotionally (or whatever)— physically— though? Yeah, it looks fucking haunted. That television turns on by itself, tell you what.
(My husband, portraying me accurately.)
Most of the time with haunted houses, it’s either a very big house or a very small one. You got your classic haunted mansion, which could be a crumbling Victorian or a pristine Modernist compound, but either way we’re looking at a minimum of 3,000 square feet of spooky shit. The size of the lawn and/or estate is a separate matter. Today’s matter is confined (wink) to interiors.
(I’m not claustrophobic at all, why do you ask? In fact there’s nothing I love more than a firm and constant “hug” from the building that I live in.)
The small haunted houses are not often in great shape, though they are sometimes charming in a rustic way, or are allowed a few signature architectural details. Expressions of personal pride and decor tend to be played for chills and/or laughs, though (especially sentimental heirlooms and collections). One cannot simply “decorate the summer cabin with folk kitsch” because, I guess, bad artistic choices means Satan is coming for you and not that you have unexamined beliefs about how other people live their lives.
(I’m willing to accept that this pyramid implies absolutely anything from “a racist cult meets here” to “one specific guy got stoned, read about sacred geometry, and had to find something to do with leftover trail blaze paint.”)
More often than not, though, if they’re not just straight-forwardly outbuildings or temporary structures, they’re what I would describe as small haunted house that happens to be portrayed as part of a bigger house; a distinct zone somewhere between, under, over where Real Life happens, like the walls, the attic, and the basement.
(A wise person would immediately nail that wee little vortex of damnation shut without so much as a glance inside.)
If a stand-alone ramshackle cottage beset by specters is too on-the-nose in regards to the (“our”) fear of poverty and hatred of the poor, or if the point is to have some “phantom uprising of the lower classes” parable (you can probably guess who I’m rooting for), a big house where only utility, maintenance, service areas are haunted is functionally a haunting of a house-within-a-house. This is a very flexible and compelling approach for a popular culture of looking, which the dominant one is (“ours”). It forces the living protagonists into an intimate confrontation but still allows them walk-and-gawk plenty.
Plus you get that nice tension with the door and the stairs to the basement or the attic or the crawl space. Come for “location, location, location,” and stay for “portals, portals, portals.”
(Oh no, you first. I insist.)
In short, haunted houses that are actually small haunted houses inside of bigger ones are great for film. Isolation is usually part of the set up and even the best dialogue rarely conveys fear in a visual medium as well as thoughtful photography and actors who understand how to use space. Good actors convey in what ways their space is their character and in what ways it is another character they have a relationship with. Really good actors know how this is a collaborate effort (and why really good actors who are also nice people will often shout out to makeup, prop, set, lighting, and production staff, ahem).
Related, really good real estate agents understand this, too. It’s not a wacky coincidence that so much real estate photography feels, as they say, “extremely cursed,” or at least uncanny, or that no one really expects a real estate agent as a character in a haunted house story to be merely a necessary, temporary catalyst for the logic of the plot anymore.
(Weird how all of these doors opened on their own when you arrived. They are definitely not going to snap shut in succession the moment you pass the final threshold and point of no return.)
When I see an actor in a haunted house movie press their professionally-kinetic and artfully-dynamic body against wallpapered halls that lead to twisty staircases? I love it. Promises made by genre are being fulfilled to me as a viewer in such moments. I could watch a montage that’s just lingering shots of staircases: the landings, the aprons, the balustrades. In a haunted house, there is no such thing as a staircase with a meaningless shape. Or for that matter, with a meaningless amount of natural lighting. You know how some are always cast in the half-light of the fae by casement and transom windows, while others are encased in a coffin-tunnel of solid wall?
I will never get enough of this.
And of course when they are exposed they are exposed fully, like the deadly spiral at the core of an Apple Store, which is to say somehow opulent in their austerity, vulnerable to their own hubris, clear as in see-through as well as in clear disregard to the needs of the disabled, very old, very young, infirm, tired, distracted, high, drunk, and panicked.
(Seen here are some lesser-known environmental storytelling tropes: Chekhov’s floating stairs, Chekhov’s window wall, Chekhov’s exposed furnace, and Chekhov’s corny sheet music art. That song is actually called “Live, Laugh, Love, DIE” and there’s a famous cover by Gary Jules that’s set in a minor key.)
Faucets (and vessels, drains, pipes, wells, cisterns, and so forth) are like this, too. Lots of acting can be accomplished within kitchens and bathrooms because water is basically alive and magic, which is why it’s never really surprising when the water acts funny (turns to slime or blood, clangs about, resists reasonable temperatures, whirls and swirls and lures and muffles and drowns and dissolves, etc).
Getting murdered while taking a shower? Practically inevitable.
See, it’s not, like, totally silly to always leave the door or curtain open a bit— hypothetically, as something a person might habitually do— so you can easily confirm that there are no murderers in there, waiting to murder you. Maybe you do “watch too many movies” or “need to ask your therapist for stronger treatment options,” but your ol’ pal Julian thinks you’re just sensitive to the fact that water is basically alive and magic, and we as mortal human beings are correct to be a bit afraid of it.
While the bathroom is simply flooded (wink) with metaphors of waste and purity and privacy, the kitchen is similarly awash (sorry, I’ll stop now) with possibility that routine meals may turn to ritual feasts, social gatherings at the hearth to open invitations, and anyone and anything may come in, up, down, or out from the cold.
Window over a kitchen sink? You are absolutely going to witness and experience something really fucking creepy there.
I know this because that’s a portal over water and you have just had a nice refreshing glass to drink and glanced outside to admire the view.
Love,
Julian
PS—