Review of The House of the Devil (2009) by Matty C — 20 Aug 2011

Movie lovers must be starving for entertainment these days because that's the only way to explain anyone giving House of the Devil a high rating.

The plot (?): Samantha (Jocelin Donahue), a college student struggling to make ends meet, takes a part-time job babysitting for Mr. and Mrs. Ulman (Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov), an eccentric couple who live in a creepy old house in a remote part of town.

The End.

Well not really, but we should be so lucky...

Upon arriving at the Ulman's home Samantha learns the couple don't have a child and just want her to stay in the house with Mrs. Ulman's elderly mother while they go out to celebrate the lunar eclipse. At this point anyone with one functioning brain cell and a knowledge of the film's title can pretty much figure out where this is going, but unfortunately House of the Devil goes nowhere for the remainder of the film. We are treated to scene after scene of Samantha sneaking about the old "creepy" house, jumping around to music on her Walkman, ordering pizza, looking through the Ulman's personal belongings and finding clues to their true identities. There are no surprises for the viewers, however, because the filmmakers have let us in on what's about to happen rather than using it as a plot twist in the film's climax. As for the ending itself, let's just say after borrowing elements from Rosemary's Baby the movie abruptly ends and you are left feeling like you could have spent the past hour and a half of your time doing something more entertaining and thought provoking, such as sorting your laundry or watching paint dry.

Writer/director Ti West seemed so concerned about making House of the Devil look like a 1980s horror movie that he forgot one very important detail: a story. The movie is all style and no substance. I'm not the type of viewer who needs to have a lot of gory special effects or things jumping at me every few minutes to be entertained, I prefer scares by way of a good script rather than gimmicks, but House of the Devil doesn't even have gimmicks and after an hour and a half of absolutely nothing, the movie quickly shifts to 5 minutes of gratuitous violence followed by an anticlimactic ending which left me feeling like the filmmaker had no way out of this mess so he decided to just kill it.

If you're looking for fun and scares you won't find them here, if you're looking for an alternative to sleeping pills, this is your ticket. Do yourself a favor and rent a real 80's horror flick, you'll be glad you did.