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[Open House]
Plot:Tells the story of a wealthy couple in a strained marriage that hosts an open house in order to sell their palatial home. They are horrified to find out days later however, that one potential buyer never left their house.
Cast:Anna Paquin,
Stephen Moyer,
Tricia Helfer,
Rachel Blanchard,
Brian Geraghty,
Jessica Collins,
Larry Sullivan,
Gabriel Olds,
Gerald Downey,
Mia Riverton.
My Thoughts:Nicely performance driven but too "lifetimey".
Review:Open House" is the directorial debut of Andrew Paquin, brother of Anna Paquin, which should come as no surprise considering she has a role in the picture. Albeit a small one. As does her "True Blood" co-star Stephen Moyer. "Open House" has Moyer playing the husband of Alice (Blanchard), a couple who seem to be having a bit or marital turmoil. Therefore, they decide to sell their home. However one potential buyer named David (Geraghty) has never left the house, and the couple soon finds this out the hard way when they end up becoming victims of said potential buyer, and his estranged/psychotic wife Lila (Helfer).
"Open House" is strictly a psycho-horror-thriller. But the movie lacks edge. It comes off less as a hardcore slasher film, with twisted characters, who have twisted logic, and twisted motives. Ala "Last House On The Left" (2009). Instead, the movie comes off more as a Lifetime Movie Of The Week sort of deal. And I don't just say that in reference to the story, kills, or characters, but the entire make of the movie just screams Lifetime Movie or Oxygen Network Movie.
Not really a film where hardcore horror afficionados could say it best represents the genre. It could also be labeled as "glitz horror", which would be a movie where everything is beautiful looking, and the villains are just normal suburban-looking people. Nothing really scary about that, especially in a 2010 world where trippy weird murderer types residing in the rich burbs isn't really as much of a surprise as it would've been 2 or three decades ago.
The performances of Helfer, as the manipulative Lila, Geraghty as the ever-so-loyal David, and Blanchard as the unluckily-kidnapped Alice, all work, and play off of one another well enough to keep the movie going at a decent pace. But "Open House" lacks originality in it's demises. The kill scenes are bloody, and have impact with how they're shot and played out, but one can only take so many stabbings and throat slashings. But then again in a movie like this, the director and writer aren't really going for slasherdom, as much as they're going for portraying two normal-looking human beings as inner-monsters.
It's hard to really get a grip on the relationship between Lila and David, as it seems at first a relationship of convenience for Lila, considering David is not really the strong type. But it also has shades of a twisted-demented version or idea of love, which seems to put forth the idea that these two need each other to exist. Not to mention with what they've done so far, abandoning each other wouldn't be in the best interest of neither of them.
But their relationship is dark and intriguing enough to keep an otherwise thin story from collapsing under the weight of a feather. The script also teases us with a hypothetical and possible love triangle/betrayal angle between David, Lila, and Alice, as the relationship between David and Alice starts to show shades of familiar genre twists, where the villain ends up bonding with one of their victims, and soon the possibility that the villain will betray his or her partner in crime, in order to spare the life of a particular hostage, begins to rear it's head as sort of a reverse version of Stockholm's Syndrome.
"Open House" uses that aspect to uphold what is as I said above, a very thin story, and further plays upon this aspect near the end of the picture. And ending which doesn't lack suspense or thrills, but lacks cleverness, edginess, and shock value. Honestly, I'd like to say that this movie ended on a nice twist or two, but the reality is it played things safe, close to the vest, and thus didn't really conclude as powerfully as I thought it could.
"Open House" isn't for hardcore genre fans, looking for the latest cool slasher movie. It blends small elements of "Last House On The Left", with larger elements of a "Wild Things" and "The Glass House". Thus it's more for the horror-lite crowd, who like their horror films with an "MTV" glamour to them where everything is shiny, plastic, and suburbanesquely-bizarre, rather than gritty and realistic, with any strong human elements.
Positives:Geraghty, Helfer, and Blanchard give good performances. A very well directed movies which catches the death scenes really well angle-wise.
Negatives:Story is very thin, not much room for conflict or exciting twists, repetitive deaths, and a lack of a hard enoguh edge to free itself from a monotonous cycle of predictability.
Overall:Two out of four stars.
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