Netflix horror film Things Heard and Seen is an unusual mix of crime thriller, supernatural horror, and philosophical musings based primarily around the theories of Emanuel Swedenborg and the paintings of George Innes, which were in turn inspired by Swedenborg.
What starts as a saga about an unhappily married couple who move into a haunted house grows into an existential horror with a bonkers ending. Fear not though, we are here to break it down for you.
George (James Norton) and Catherine (Amanda Seyfried) move with their young daughter Franny to a small town when George gets a job lecturing at the local college. Almost as soon as they move in, strange things begin to happen in the house and a pervasive smell of petrol fills their room at night.
It is revealed that a murder-suicide occurred with the house’s previous owners – Calvin Vayle killed his wife Ella Vayle...
What starts as a saga about an unhappily married couple who move into a haunted house grows into an existential horror with a bonkers ending. Fear not though, we are here to break it down for you.
George (James Norton) and Catherine (Amanda Seyfried) move with their young daughter Franny to a small town when George gets a job lecturing at the local college. Almost as soon as they move in, strange things begin to happen in the house and a pervasive smell of petrol fills their room at night.
It is revealed that a murder-suicide occurred with the house’s previous owners – Calvin Vayle killed his wife Ella Vayle...
- 4/30/2021
- by Rosie Fletcher
- Den of Geek
Image Source: Netflix
If you went in thinking you'd be able to fully comprehend Netflix's Things Heard & Seen because you'd read the Elizabeth Brundage novel it is based on, think again. The film - which premiered April 29 - sees the relationship between married couple George (James Norton) and Catherine Clare (Amanda Seyfried) begin to unravel after the family moves into an old farmhouse in Upstate New York. Eerie things begin happening at the house as Catherine realizes that George may not be all he says he is. These suspicions eventually result in her murder. Despite knowing who the killer is, the film's ending leaves us with more questions than answers.
Things Heard & Seen's Premise
George Clare takes a teaching position at Saginaw College and moves his family onto an old dairy farm in Upstate New York. It doesn't take long for his wife, Catherine, to start noticing odd things around the house.
If you went in thinking you'd be able to fully comprehend Netflix's Things Heard & Seen because you'd read the Elizabeth Brundage novel it is based on, think again. The film - which premiered April 29 - sees the relationship between married couple George (James Norton) and Catherine Clare (Amanda Seyfried) begin to unravel after the family moves into an old farmhouse in Upstate New York. Eerie things begin happening at the house as Catherine realizes that George may not be all he says he is. These suspicions eventually result in her murder. Despite knowing who the killer is, the film's ending leaves us with more questions than answers.
Things Heard & Seen's Premise
George Clare takes a teaching position at Saginaw College and moves his family onto an old dairy farm in Upstate New York. It doesn't take long for his wife, Catherine, to start noticing odd things around the house.
- 4/29/2021
- by Grayson Gilcrease
- Popsugar.com
It was 18 years ago — how time flies in the indie world — that the married directing team of Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman brought us “American Splendor,” an achingly humane, scabrously funny, miraculously playful and inventive lower-depths comedy based on the life and work of the lumpen verité comic-book diarist Harvey Pekar, played by Paul Giamatti in a performance of irascible brilliance. The movie was an audacious triumph, and going forward one wanted, and expected, more great things from Pulcini and Berman. In the years since, however, nothing they’ve done has come within miles of living up to the promise of that landmark film. The odd thing is that their earnest empathy and craft is always on display; they have an instinct for pace, for camera angles, for how to seek out three dimensions in places where too many filmmakers settle for two. Yet lightning has never struck again for them.
- 4/29/2021
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
It’s safe to assume any movie that opens with a quote from 17th century pluralistic-Christian theologian (and big time spiritualist) Emanuel Swedenborg has a lot on its mind, and so it’s no surprise that Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s “Things Heard & Seen” isn’t the straightforward horror story that’s suggested by its ominous flash-forward of an opening scene. Indeed, Swedenborg’s insistence that “things that are in heaven are more real than things that are in the world” hovers over the first hour of this strange movie like a gentle hand on your shoulder, as if to say “don’t be afraid of this haunted old house in the Hudson Valley. Just because it comes with a ghost or two and a smattering of half-hearted jump-scares doesn’t mean that it’s evil. Amanda Seyfried could’ve had that freaky nightmare about pulling a...
- 4/28/2021
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
A haunted house, a religious philosophy, and a horrible story of domestic abuse are at the center of this Netflix original horror-thriller, Things Heard & Seen, a movie that plays with big ideas but gets confused along the way.
Amanda Seyfried stars as Catherine, a young art restorer who moves with her lecturer husband George (James Norton) to a small town and a new house when he secures a job at a local college. Isolated from her own work and friends, and now a full time mum to their young daughter Franny, Catherine grows increasingly frustrated while George appears to be thriving, adored by his young students, popular with staff at the small college where he teaches art history, and indulging in extra curricular activities with a local girl (Stranger Things’ Natalia Dyer).
Meanwhile the house they moved into seems to have a personality and history of its own, linked to some former residents.
Amanda Seyfried stars as Catherine, a young art restorer who moves with her lecturer husband George (James Norton) to a small town and a new house when he secures a job at a local college. Isolated from her own work and friends, and now a full time mum to their young daughter Franny, Catherine grows increasingly frustrated while George appears to be thriving, adored by his young students, popular with staff at the small college where he teaches art history, and indulging in extra curricular activities with a local girl (Stranger Things’ Natalia Dyer).
Meanwhile the house they moved into seems to have a personality and history of its own, linked to some former residents.
- 4/28/2021
- by Rosie Fletcher
- Den of Geek
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