[House Of The Devil]
Plot:Set in the 1980's where a girl who takes a babysitting job finds herself in the middle of a satanic cult.

Cast: AJ Bowen, Jocelin Donahue, Greta Gerwig.

My Thoughts:All that...........for this?

Review:The hype machine is a very mean-spirited object. Ti West's "House Of The Devil" had been hyped up as this terrifying, scary, and ultra-spooky horror film about the occult and all of that. Much like Ti West's "The Roost" had been hyped up as this really scary movie. I wasn't impressed with "The Roost" when I finally saw it. Nor was I very impressed with "House Of The Devil" when I finally saw it. The film follows a young college girl, who like all college students, has financial issues.

She's got to score some quick cash to pay to rent a boarding house, and she only has $84 total in her bank account. She sees an advertisement posted on her campus board asking for a babysitter. She answers the ad, but when she agrees to meet with the person who posted it, they mysteriously stand her up. Then, as fate would have it, the person contacts her again, and this time, she agrees to go to their place and babysit. Taking her friend along with her.

But the place is way out in the rural/sticks part of town, and when the girl and her friend arrive, they find out that it's not a babysitting gig persay, but that she's being hired to look after an old woman. Her friend doesn't like the set up, and pleads with her to turn down the job, and come back to campus with her. But she needs the offered $400 dollars badly, so she decides to stay and take on the gig. Her friend heads back though, to campus. Soon, as she remains at the house, she begins to discover strange things about the house, and the woman she's caring for. Will she realize the danger before it's too late?

"House Of The Devil" tries to make it's claim to fame by being an 80's throwback sort of movie. Similar to those old 80's occult movies where satanic weirdo's prey on someone who's been lured to a particular location under false pretenses. But isn't this always the case with horror movies where someone heads out to hillbilly land for a gig of some sort? Whether it's a rock concert, babysitting job, or something as simple as a flat tire, being in the sticks is never a good thing in a horror film.

This movie offers up nothing new. We get a pretty girl, who lacks street smarts, who puts herself in a situation where she can be victimized to high hell without anyone being around to save her. How many times can this plot be rehashed, revisited, and redone? Not to mention this movie really goes to great lengths to bore the viewer by having it's main character, this college student do absolutely nothing while in the house besides play some music and walk around. This isn't the 1999 remake of "The Haunting" here.

There's no huge budget here to build a huge house as a set piece, and use the house as a way to wow the viewer. Movies with huge budgets can afford to have characters lolligag for awhile because they can just hold the viwers interest with the gigantic, gothic-looking house. A house so huge because the studio budget allowed for it to be built. In an indie setting, the house in this movie looked like the usual countryside sort of house. It held no intimidation factor, no scare-factor, or anything.

So, you have to rely on the main character to keep the viewer interested by making her do something...well...interesting. This film, does not do that. Now it does have it's shocking moments. There's a scene which occurs when the girls friend is headed back to campus after dropping her off, and the scene is shocking and comes out of nowhere. And the movies final act holds one or two slight shocks. But in reality, you know where this movie is going from the jump.

It starts how you'd expect it to start, it "middles", how you'd expect it to middle, and it ends how you'd expect it to end. Which is sad, because this movie has potential to be very good, dark, and scary. But it squanders that opportunity by just doing nothing with the rich story and plot opportunities that it has. Like I said, West, really wanted to do a throwback to the 80's thing with this film. He succeeded in creating an 80's tone, and feel to the film and it's characters. But, the scares, terror, sheer fear, and suspense and chills which 80's occult movies were mostly known for were not here in this movie at all. And that's why it just didn't work.

Positives:Recreating the 80's throwback tone, and feel worked really well within the film. A brief shock moment involving the college girls friend after she drops her off at the house where she is to be babysitting.

Negatives:No suspense, chills, thrills, or even modest level of entertainment value is within this movie. You're alsways waiting for something big to happen, and it never does. Also how many times can we rehash the "babysitting-gig-gone-wrong-in-rural-america" storyline?

Overall:One star out of four.





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