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- Movie: The House of the Devil
- Rating: R
- Starring: Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov, AJ Bowen, Greta Gerwig, and Dee Wallace
- Written By: Ti West
- Directed By: Ti West
- Distributor: Magnolia Pictures
- Running Time: 1 hrs. 35 min.
- Series:
The House of the Devil Movie Review
If Your Antichrist Isn't Delivered in 30 Minutes, It's Free By
Rob Vaux
October 30, 2009
Jocelin Donahue in Ti West's THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL(2009).
© Magnolia Pictures
There's no sense half-assing any endeavor, whether it's digging a ditch or designing a new computer system. The creators of The House of the Devil have taken that to heart in their homage to cheesy 80s Satan movies. Instead of updates and re-imaginings and "everything's just like it was before, only with worse actors and cell phones," they work to recreate the feel of those movies from whole cloth. The setting remains period, the clothes and haircuts indisputably Reagan era. Even the film stock looks authentic, and director Ti West employs a number of deliberate stylistic choices (such as the freeze frame over the opening credits) to uncannily evoke his subject. If you didn't check the copyright date, you'd swear it sprang straight from the video rental store, stashed alongside similar fare like The Gate and 976-EVIL.
That alone might be enough to recommend it, but West possesses a sense of discipline which many of his predecessors don't. He refrains from cheap scare tactics, relying instead on old-fashioned tension to carry the bulk of the film. The set-up is simple. A nice young college student (Jocelin Donahue), desperate for money, takes a babysitting job at a strange old house in the woods. Her employer (Tom Noonan) seems very peculiar--especially the part about watching his invalid mother instead of a child like he promised--but essentially harmless. Besides, for $400 a little weirdness becomes pretty tolerable.
Naturally, there's more to it than that--like the fact that the job takes place on the night of a lunar eclipse or that the house in question stands right next to a graveyard--but West is in no hurry to get to the money shots. Instead, he draws out the proceedings like a razor, following the girl's progress towards landing the job, then leaving her alone in that spooky house as midnight slowly approaches. The build-up becomes the purpose of the exercise, marked by a few quietly unsettling clues and one big shock in the middle of it all, but otherwise focused more on what doesn't happen than what does.
It makes for quite a two-edged sword, for while West really knows what he's doing (you can savor the atmosphere like fine wine), the length of time involved stretches even the most patient viewer to the breaking point. Obviously, we pick up on what's really going on long before the girl does and the urge to scream "get on with it!" grows well nigh irresistible in the final third. The House of the Devil compensates by making the girl plucky and likeable, as well as doling out the spooky noises just often enough to keep us from throwing up our hands in disgust. While the finale can't quite justify the wait--it indulges in the tropes of the genre too much--it still attains an air of creepiness which solidifies the film's otherwise reliable credentials.
And it does so without once breaking a smile… which must have taken quite a bit considering how poorly most of its predecessors have aged. West commits to his scenario wholeheartedly and refrains from cop-outs such as self-referential dialogue noting the anachronisms of the age.
Those instincts serve him equally well in keeping the goofiness to a minimum--even the climax has an air of authenticity to it--and allowing the few preposterous moments to feel more like an homage than a genuine failing. Fans of Eli Roth and his ilk are bound to be disappointed--The House of the Devil really hails from an earlier age--but those of us who remember that strange and marvelous era when the grindhouse gave way to VHS pajama parties are apt to see a kindred spirit at work here. The year has already provided its share of pleasant surprises on the horror front; give The House of the Devil an honored place within their ranks.
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I can't wait for this to play around me soon. Hopefully soon…
I don't know what to make of it except I just want an alternative to the whole porn-torture crap that passes as horror flicks nowadays. So far I like the preview and the poster art. The artwork reminds me of when I was a kid going to the local Rite-Aid and looking at the little box art pics they had for the horror movies for rent.