Review of House at the End of the Street (2012) by Elizabeth A — 27 Mar 2013

House At The End Of The Street is a horror story starring Jennifer Lawrence and Max Thieriot, based off of a true story. After Elissa Cassidy and her mother move to a new town, she tries to befriend the boy next door, who's sister died in a tragic accident at a very young age. Throughout the story, it shows him going into his basement and feeding an unstable girl, who the directors set staged so the audience thinks she is his sister. After they get intimate, she goes to throw something away, and finds blue contacts, an ID of someone, and tampons in the garbage. Ryan finds her there, and throws her out of his house. She stumbles out, sobbing, but doesn't notice that he was chasing someone through the woods. Later, when she visits him to apologize but he's not there, she decides to go exploring. When she gets to the basement, she sees him throwing a dead body in his car. She runs from him, but he follows her, and tells everything to her: Her sister was a psycho murderer, and she killed her parents. After that, she died after falling off a swing, because of Ryan. In his sorrows, since she died, Ryan has been kidnapping girls, making them look like her - the contacts - drugging them, and keeping them in his basement. Every once in a while, when he overdoses them, he dumps their bodies, and starts over with someone new. At the end of the movie, her mom comes looking for her, after receiving a voicemail where she was crying for help, along with a police officer. Ryan manages to stab the police officer, but then Elissa's mom takes Ryan down. The movie then concludes with Ryan's death.

It's not everyday when you find a surprisingly bad movie, but obviously today was one of those days. The trailer for HATES made the movie seem like a terrifying ghost-horror movie, but it turns out it was just two psychos and one hot chick. The acting done by Jennifer Lawrence was fantastic, as always, but Max Thierot's was questionable. One minute he would be a murderer, and the next he would have the emotion of a little brother coming at you with a foam sword. Thankfully, the acting done by Eva Link was incredible. The whole time, her acting did not falter, and she had me at the end of my seat:) And fortunately, the cinematography was done very nicely, I enjoyed the different angles. At one point in the movie, when Elissa discovered Carrie Anne's secret, she put her hand to her mouth, and you could see Carrie Anne behind her. The whole idea for the movie was genius, and I really liked the plot, unlike what most of the critics say. Strangely though, House At The End of the Street was nominated for MTV Movie Awards. How? I have no clue. One thing that they did't do so well was the musical score. It was nonexistent. They had maybe three or four scenes with music, but all of the suspenseful ones didn't have any. If they would have wanted to make the movie more frightening, they could have added scary music. The audience review that it got weren't very good, either. 45% audience members enjoyed it, and only 11% of critics liked it. 11! The only movie I have seen recently that was worse than that was Playing For Keeps at 4%. It really could have been better, I would have rated it a 6/10, but if you are looking for a movie that has a scary plot, but not a very scary movie, this is the one for you!