The House Ending Explained: Who Will Escape From Those Cursed Four Walls? La Maison Spoilers!
The House is stop-motion anthology film available on Netflix! Somewhere in the realm of Tim Burton and Wes Anderson lurks Netflix’s new stop-motion anthology, The House. Produced by Nexus Studios, this adult-oriented series tells three independent 30-minute stories about the humans and animals that live in the seemingly innocuous eponymous house.
Four independent animators lead the different episodes: Belgian duo Emma de Swaef and Marc James Roels, Swedish director Niki Lindroth von Bahr and British director/actress Paloma Baeza. The premise of the show feels like an incentive for creative writing at the best of times, and each director uses the house motif as a springboard to their own strange worlds.
The resulting stories are set in different times and with different species, but there’s consistency between the themes and the offbeat humor of the episodes. Marketed as a dark comedy, The House is less concerned with hilarious jokes than with singular ironies, the series questioning what it means to renovate oneself. If you have any questions about the end of The House, we tell you everything!
The House Chapter 1: Ending Explained
Van Schoonbeek, who poses as an architect and Raymond’s mysterious benefactor, is probably some kind of dark magical entity. It turns out Thomas is an actor hired to mediate between the unsuspecting family and Van Schoonbeek. In his tormented state, Thomas eventually reveals that his employer gives him a script every day outlining what to say to Raymond and Penny in order to bring the couple closer to their strange fate.
The fire flares up in the hearth and begins to spread as Mabel and her little brother or sister climb out the window. Chapter 1 of The House ends with the two girls on top of a hill, watching the mansion burn in the distance. In all likelihood, it looks like Raymond and Penelope are dead. Their last grim words to their daughters, telling them to save themselves, strongly suggest that the parents will not survive.
Since there is definitely some supernatural activity going on, a better way to view Raymond and Penelope’s fate would be to think of them as forever trapped in the house (as opposed to death). If the house survives the fire as it is alluded to in later chapters, the couple could be doomed to spend years as inanimate objects. It also fits the theme of the sinister house, which appears to be cursed and has a habit of trapping or nearly absorbing its owners.
The House Chapter 2: Ending Explained
Upon returning from the hospital, the promoter finds the house filled with the odd couple’s equally odd family. With a resigned air, he enters the house. A montage follows in which we see the unwanted guests gnawing on all the furniture and accessories in the house, destroying all the work done. At the end of Chapter 2 of The House, the Developer, turned back into a mouse, is seen burrowing into the wall behind what was the kitchen’s piece de resistance, a high-end roasting oven.
Thus, the protagonist is faced with a dark fate in which he seems to have given up not only all his plans and ambitions, but also his entire way of life. The hopelessness of the situation seems to have crushed him and, with nothing else to do, the professional entrepreneur is reduced to a scavenger animal.
Another way to look at the ending of The House Chapter 2 might be that the developer, overwhelmed by the furry beetle infestation and his own dire financial situation, hallucinates the Odd Couple. So the strange couple and their takeover of the house signifies what the furry beetles are actually doing to the property, and the protagonist, after a traumatic few days alone in the house, essentially loses his mind and begins to see the furry beetles like “civilized” mice.
The House Chapter 3: Ending Explained
Jen, who has already gone boating with Cosmos, calls him to implore Rosa to join them. The young owner of the house, who has suddenly had a change of heart, pushes on a pillar erected by Cosmos, and the entire structure begins to move. Very quickly, the house comes off its foundations and a steering wheel appears on its roof.
As Rosa begins to lead her house on the water, she is joined by Jen and Elias in their respective boats, and the end of House Chapter 3 shows us the group floating in the mist. The whereabouts of Rosa and her former tenants are never revealed, and like the other chapters, this chapter also leaves mystery hanging over the fate of the protagonist.
However, the ending of Chapter 3 of The House is decidedly more optimistic and ends with Rosa in the company of those who clearly care about her instead of being left alone in a slowly sinking house. Rosa seems to break the cycle of previous owners being essentially “gobbled up” by the house.
Thus, the house and Cosmos, which were initially burdens for the protagonist, become agents of her salvation. In the end, Rosa not only escapes the desolate place but also the impossible ideas she clings to so stubbornly.
