☆ ☆ ☆ ½
The
House of the Devil (2009) – T. West
I’m sure the production team had a lot of
fun with this feature, a pitch perfect recreation of a late 70s/early 80s “teenager
in peril” horror film. Right from the
opening credits, with bad font and freeze frame and the spooky synth
soundtrack, those who remember the genre from when it was new will be
tickled. There is a really really slow
build as we meet Samantha (Jocelin Donahue), the babysitter hired by a weird
older couple (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov), and her rebellious friend, Megan
(Greta Gerwig), with feathered Farrah hair, who drives her out to the upstate
New York house. It turns out that Sam is
meant to babysit Woronov’s elderly mother rather than any actual baby – on the
night of a lunar eclipse that turns out to be significant (the opening credits
tip us off that Satanism is somehow involved).
Of course, Sam is soon alone in the dark and quiet old house and
suspense builds and builds. In fact,
this is probably the point of the film – how long can the director (Ti West, who
also wrote the screenplay) toy with us by offering false alarms, just bumps in
the night? And then suddenly there is a
burst of horror and the film rushes to its conclusion. Perhaps there is ultimately less than meets
the eye but I personally felt satisfied – I don’t need any drawn out gory
horror but rather some indicative supernatural flourishes will fulfil me
plenty. (We get a bit more than
that). In the end, this is a showcase
for directorial fetishism, I suppose, and it seems that Ti West’s career in
horror has been assured. If all of his
work is “old school”, I might be tempted to check more of it out (despite the
low IMDb ratings).
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