Review of House of Good and Evil (2013) by Brian C — 15 Mar 2016

This is labeled as a psychological thriller, about a woman's slow descent into madness. In reality, this movie is a choppy mess of confusion and chaos. The starring couple bought a house without ever having seen it, and without any knowledge of it being a duplex, or having tenants, no phones, no power, and no running water.

There are several massive chunks of important information missing. The couple is somber and dark one moment, and crazy in love the next, and then abruptly fighting without any explanation. This back-and-forth behavior between them lasts throughout the movie, and is never explained as to why they suddenly hate each other. Three days into the move, they still have no furniture. and no mattress on their bed. She hears a conversation through a wall, which is completely inaudible, and she begins panicking and running outside trying to stop someone from leaving in the middle of the night. Her previously sleeping husband comes out, and tells her to go to bed, and she says "We have to stop him! We have to call the police, why don't you believe me!?" Without her saying anything to him beforehand.

A man is talking casually, and then there's eerie music, and nothing happens. There was no hint about him being dangerous, he wasn't holding a knife, or other weapon, or doing anything suspicious. During actually creepy moments, there is no music at all.

She knocks on the neighbor's door and doesn't even give her a single minute before getting a nasty tone, and breaking into her house. This is halfway into the movie, and it's only her second attempt to talk to the unseen neighbor, the first attempt she didn't even know if the woman was home and still acted aggressively.

The music is horrifically loud, and drowns out anything we SHOULD be hearing.

There's no "thriller" aspect, just obnoxious noise and choppy scenes that give the impression of "This is supposed to be scary, but we don't know why. Maybe loud crescendos will make it scarier" and "WE know what the story is, so we don't need to explain these scenes", like the writer and director expected the viewers to know what the in-between segments were.

The writing is absolutely terrible, and I hope to hell that Blu De Golyer never writes again, and that David Mun never directs another movie. These two, particularly, are a match made in an outhouse.