What Remains of Edith Finch
Apr. 8th, 2025 05:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
varidogWhat Remains of Edith Finch was a curious game, more novel than game. The game mechanics are minimal, and most of the stories are experiential.
The whole episode takes place on the lonely Oregon coast, inside a strange house. The physical design work is just gorgeous, as the house is stuffed with clutter, photos, and flaws.
From beginning to end, it's about two hours.
In summary, a pregnant 17 year old woman returns to the strange house of her upbringing, following where a key takes her, learning the stories of her family. The house is filled with sealed off rooms, with each room being a memorial to the person who once lived there, each preserved as they were left.
Each of those people died.
Each of those stories is told by an unreliable narrator.
Overall, the feel is Lovecraftian, which hints of horror, but never really shows it. Even the story of the cursed family emphasizes that.
However, this is not the story of horror. On sitting with it, from beginning to end, this is a story that invites you to believe in the Lovecraftian horror, but you are the one who brings that into the story. You are the one who imposes the supernatural.
As I said, all narrators are unreliable.
The house itself is a shrine to itself, so much so that each generation has to build more and more areas to live in. In the most literal sense, the house is story upon story of its generations.
This is a tale of grief, and how, by holding onto the past, by holding onto grief, the family cannot thrive. Death is a part of life, and death is not a curse.
In a normal house, in a normal family, rooms would get emptied out and re-used. They''d repaint the walls and redo the furniture. The dead would give way to the living. That doesn't happen here. The rooms are literally sealed shut with foam insulation, with peephole drilled into the doors so that you can see the rooms. It's only by comparing normalcy to this place that the real villain appears.
The ending is indicative here. The protagonist passes away, and it's the protagonist's son who concludes the tale, laying flowers on her grave. This is the only mourning that we see. He wasn't there for the house, or the shrines, or the stories, or the family, he was there to mourn his mother and lay flowers on her grave.
Nowhere else, in the entire story, do we see mourning.
By this simple act, he broke the family curse.
The whole episode takes place on the lonely Oregon coast, inside a strange house. The physical design work is just gorgeous, as the house is stuffed with clutter, photos, and flaws.
From beginning to end, it's about two hours.
In summary, a pregnant 17 year old woman returns to the strange house of her upbringing, following where a key takes her, learning the stories of her family. The house is filled with sealed off rooms, with each room being a memorial to the person who once lived there, each preserved as they were left.
Each of those people died.
Each of those stories is told by an unreliable narrator.
Overall, the feel is Lovecraftian, which hints of horror, but never really shows it. Even the story of the cursed family emphasizes that.
However, this is not the story of horror. On sitting with it, from beginning to end, this is a story that invites you to believe in the Lovecraftian horror, but you are the one who brings that into the story. You are the one who imposes the supernatural.
As I said, all narrators are unreliable.
The house itself is a shrine to itself, so much so that each generation has to build more and more areas to live in. In the most literal sense, the house is story upon story of its generations.
This is a tale of grief, and how, by holding onto the past, by holding onto grief, the family cannot thrive. Death is a part of life, and death is not a curse.
In a normal house, in a normal family, rooms would get emptied out and re-used. They''d repaint the walls and redo the furniture. The dead would give way to the living. That doesn't happen here. The rooms are literally sealed shut with foam insulation, with peephole drilled into the doors so that you can see the rooms. It's only by comparing normalcy to this place that the real villain appears.
The ending is indicative here. The protagonist passes away, and it's the protagonist's son who concludes the tale, laying flowers on her grave. This is the only mourning that we see. He wasn't there for the house, or the shrines, or the stories, or the family, he was there to mourn his mother and lay flowers on her grave.
Nowhere else, in the entire story, do we see mourning.
By this simple act, he broke the family curse.
