This week’s Shadows House featured some truly horrific scenes. Like downright scary. Yet there’s something in the delivery and cnematic language that made more weird than frightening. It was all shown to us in such a matter of fact sort of way. There was no more ephasis on that scene than any of the other ones. No swelling music or dutch angles. Just business as usual. Kate getting angry was presented much more dramatically than a young girl with her head seemingly being devoured by a giant spider. I’m not sure if this the the right word for it, but kthink that’s part of the charm of Shadows House.
I know that I go one about the soundtrack of Shadows House a lot. I do find it marvellous. This episode though was less remarkable in that regard. So I’ll take this chance instead to let you know that I love both the OP and ED. Both have fantastic music and very good visuals. I think the OP may be a bit better with visuals but those slit dioptric scenes in the ED showing dolls and shadows in frozen set pieces are also pretty great.
We are still in the pilling on the questions portion of the story. The mystery is building and for the moment we have zero answers. For instance, there’s already a repeated motif that dolls shouldn’t think. You know no fretting about trivial matters. But then why make them capable of doing so in the first place? I didn’t mention it last week, but there was a scene in which Emilico was going up the stairs and she climbed on all fours. Clearly, she hadn’t learned how to navigate stairs yet. Great little touch. And that tracks with the idea that she is essentially a newborn and that dolls are made at a certain age. As in not human.
You see, I have been building this conspiracy theory in my head that dolls are in fact human. Either stolen or bought children brainwashed into their duties r potentially clones. But the full people type of clones. This explains why they obviously have all standard biological functions even if they aren’t practical for them. But why wouldn’t Emilico know how to go up stairs…
The bi about the soot being able to coalesce and take form, even be malicious up to a point is very interesting. It’s sort of giving me Chaos Walking vibes. I read the knife of never letting go not long ago to see what all the… noise was about! And the way soot is behaving is starting to remind me of it. And now Kate can control her soot up to a point.
Obviously, this is going to all tie in together but for now, I’m still not sure how. I do think that Emilico rather than Kate might be the catalyst here but we’ll see. I was also surprised to realize that I miss Kate when she’s not part of the episode. I was really happy to see her at the end there. All in all, I enjoyed this week’s Shadows House and I really hope we get some answers before the season is over.
