Review of The House of the Devil (2009) by Whit W — 13 Nov 2011

This movie is as dumb as a piece of popcorn. I am not kidding you -- every kernal of corn in your bucket has more intelligence than this film. It is horror-able. This is a very difficult movie to grade because it was bad, bad, bad and I am certain that today's horror fans/audience will hate it.

Being a true fan of the cinema, though, I can appreciate this film for what it is: an excellent film. What?!? I haven't been smoking anything ... nope, you read that right. The House of the Devil is an homaged throw-back to those "fright night" flicks of the early 80's with feathery hair, bad clothing, techno music and implausible storylines.

It was a time when everything had to be spelled out to the viewer and nothing much of interest happened until the end of the film. It was a time when babysitters didn't flee through the front door of a corpse-strewn house but instead climbed the staircase to drag the movie further along.

It is a time when film didn't need thought or logic; it just needed a creepy, oh-so-shocking premise. This is what makes this film so good -- it's a perfect recreation of an awfully-bad 80's scary movie.

If a viewer doesn't understand what they are watching they will most definitely think it is the stupidest, lamest, least scary or bloody horror film to ever be made! But this is ingeniously showing us how bad our good (but really BAD) scary movies really were .

.. and it actually became a laugh riot when it was supposed to be horrifying the bejesus out-of-me. The movie is spot-on perfection. I don't think I have ever seen such a well-made BAD movie. Kudos to Ti West .

.. this was very well done. But geez it was awful!