Tonight’s horror film is one I’ve been putting off for a while. This is “House of the Devil” from writer/director Ti West. I put it off because I’d watched two of his films previously and frankly, hated both. But this had a lot of hype around it and I felt I should give the director one more chance. This is one of his earlier works and is written, directed and edited by West. Eliot Rockett provides cinematography and Jeff Grace the soundtrack. The movie stars Jocelin Donahue. This was made for just $900k, but didn’t get close to recouping that in theaters. With that kind of budget though, it’s likely made it’s money back in the secondary market.
The movie is set in the 1980’s and follows “Samantha” (Donahue), a cash strapped college student needing to find some work to pay her rent. After finding a babysitting job advertised, she has her friend Megan (Greta Gerwig, yes the “Barbie” director) drive her out to check it out. On arrival she finds out it is not actually a child she will be sitting. Instead she is just required to house sit and keep an ear out for the clients elderly mother in case of an emergency. The client, “Mr Ulman” (Tom Noonan) offers to pay her four times the usual rate with half in advance. Despite her friend calling her an idiot to do it, she elects to stay. Obviously, not a wise decision.
Retro Nostalgia Bait
This film is what I imagine an alien that’s never actually seen a horror movie but read about slow burn 60’s/70’s horror may try and make. It’s easy to see what it is trying to do, but it does it so clumsily that I’m almost embarrassed for everyone involved. Yet for some reason this film has a lot of praise. Most of that praise though seems to be based on them liking the throwback style and pacing. Sure, it contrasts with a lot of the horror movies of the mid 2000’s, but if you actually put it head to head with a slow burn movie of earlier decades it is exposed for it’s shallowness. This is a million miles from “The Haunting” (1963).
Like many Ti West movies, the film uses the gimmick of being set in a past decade (80’s here) as a distraction and shortcut to world building. It doesn’t really impact anything. West also opted to use 16mm film to give the movie a retro feel. I like the look, but again it is just a gimmick. The film wants to convince you it is from a different age, yet it doesn’t have the heart of either an 80’s movie or a 60’s/70’s slow burn horror. The truth is, this is a 15 minute short story padded out to a feature film. It uses artificial tension building (Mostly through a generic, yet definitely effective soundtrack) to pretend there is more to it.
Rooting For The Villains
The first act is itself fine, if overly long. Half the movie is gone by the time our victim is in place in the mansion. I didn’t really have an issue with the movie up to this point. That didn’t last long. Samantha becomes annoying fast. After everyone leaves she starts randomly wandering around the house. About two minutes in she phones her friend and is annoyed she’s not already home. She then wanders around opening random doors and touching everything (Despite being a “Germaphobe”, which impacts almost nothing in the movie). About five minutes in, she orders a pizza and then sits down and starts eating a chocolate bar while watching TV. That lasts about 30 seconds, before she gets bored and turns it off.
After this she puts on her Walkman and plays an undetermined amount of pool. Then she starts dancing around like she’s in a disco, touching more stuff, throwing peanuts up in the air to catch in her mouth. Unsurprisingly she knocks over a vase, but only does half the job cleaning it up. After some actual plot briefly happens, she watches 5-10 seconds of TV again before getting bored once more and wandering around again. By this point, I was already rooting for the devil worshipers. This is the thing with Ti West films, his characters are not real people, they are just plot devices. She did all this stuff, because West wanted her moving around the house to build “Tension”.
Worst Devil Worshipers Ever
But the final act takes the biscuit for stupid. Turns out these are the most ineffective devil worshipers ever. They apparently can’t tie knots and they all have a tendency of standing around doing nothing to make sure Samantha has a chance to run away or deal with each of them individually. Again, no one here acts like a real person. They don’t even act like fictional characters. They are all plot devices that only ever do what is necessary to move the story along. Then you get the ending. I won’t give you spoilers, but it is very, very stupid. Even if it wasn’t, it’s basically just a knock off of far better films with a similar outcomes.
On top of this, there is some terrible continuity and abysmal lighting (Pretty sure they regularly forgot the story revolves around an eclipse). There was one scene, in the final act which I’m fairly sure it was filmed in daylight, despite it supposedly being mid lunar eclipse. The acting varies throughout, sometimes reasonable, sometimes poor. Since there are some good actors involved, I’m marking this down as bad directing. Last but not least the news report at the end about the eclipse ending fast… yeah, I just laughed at that stage.
Concussion (Not a Typo)
I feel I should say some positives, before I render judgment. I will give them a solid soundtrack. Not ground breaking, but it works very well (And the movie relies heavily on it). The use of 16mm film does actually work in the films favor too. It is a gimmick, but one I’m happy with. There’s some good visuals in the final act and the one early kill is well executed (Pun not intended). I do applaud an attempt at doing this kind of film, but this ultimately a shallow imitation of far better films. I’ve watched three Ti West films now and every one of them I found to be notably poor. I just don’t get the hype. IMDb considers this a 6.3/10. Best I can give it is a 4.5/10, which is at least higher than I gave X or The Innkeepers . Not worth your time.