Review of The House of the Devil (2009) by Rodney E — 16 Jan 2013

To be a decent horror movie in modern times is a feat that is rare to accomplish. The genre has been drenched in irony thanks to Scream and all of its crappy clones and is so repetitious and generic at times that it is useless.

House of the Devil is awesome for a variety of different reasons and the idea to make the movie look like the 80's makes it a notch above a cool homage to that era. And the late 70's-early 80's VHS era of horror was the best and I always felt the genre bombed away for home entertainment when video stores went from VHS to DVD and completely doomed and mismatched thier stock.

The cast works. Casting staples of cult movies like Dee Wallace, Tom Noonan, and Mary Woronov was a step in the right direction and it helps that Jocelin Donahue is beautiful and comes off way better than the wannabe scream queens that haven't done anything in years.

The soundtrack in both the score and 80's tunes works. While I think The Breakup Song is fairly lame, I appreciate it's use in a horror movie. I just really enjoyed this from the setup onward.

A cash strapped college student takes a quick job advertised as babysitting for a odd family and finds out that the house and family are not what they seem. There was genuine terror, suspense, atmosphere, and chills in this and I got into it.

My only gripe is that I wish I saw this in the theater or ordered it when it was being offered on demand in theaters. Some people have balked at the pacing and that leaves me to ask "are you a total moron that hasn't seen a good horror movie or know suspense?".

The House of the Devil was a rare treat that lived up to the expectations that I had for it and will be a staple in the horror classic pantheon.