The House of the Devil (2009)
Starring Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan
& Mary Woronov
Directed and Written by Ti West

 

I’m an old school guy. I like my music from the 50’s through the 80’s, ditto for my movies. While I still enjoy modern stuff, I find that most things made in the last two decades...really suck. Of all things created in the last two decades, horror films probably rank the highest on the suck meter (yes, some great horror films have been spawned in the past twenty years, but they are few and in-between). For my money, nothing beats horror from the 70’s and 80’s—of course the golden age of horror was full of gems too—but the vibe was way different. If you disagree with this view, and you think movies like the SAW series, and Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN are “like, um, the shit”, then I’ll save you some time—you won’t like this movie, so buzz off. For those of you that I haven’t alienated with my sarcasm, please read on...

Genre film veterans, Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov star as, Mr. and Mrs. Ulman, a creepy old couple that hires a college student, Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) as a babysitter so they can go watch the lunar eclipse happening that evening. Samantha is desperate for money as she just signed a lease for an apartment and is broke. When she first calls Mr. Ulman (from a number she got from a flyer on a message board at the school) about the job, he seems eager and agrees to meet with her. He never shows up at the designated meeting spot and Samantha starts to panic about her financial situation. Her friend, Megan (Greta Gerwig) sets her straight, and warns that the guy was probably a weirdo anyways. When Samantha arrives at her dorm room, she has a message from Mr. Ulman and he apologizes for not showing up, but offers to pay her double ($100) what he was going to pay her. Samantha agrees and Megan drives her to the remote house. Once in the old house, which is creepy, but not stereotypically so, in fact it’s a really nice house that seems really well taken care off...but still old and creepy. The next of many bad signs come about that evening when Mr. Ulman explains to Samantha that she will not be watching a baby, but his wife’s elderly mother. He apologizes for the subterfuge, but explains that he can never find anyone willing to watch an elderly woman, and that they are desperate. Samantha turns down the offer, but he ups the pay until $400 is on the table—just the amount she needs for her lease. She has no choice but to agree and sends Megan home, against Megan’s warnings that something isn’t right. Well, duh!

I admit, the film’s first hour (yes, hour) will really try the patience of most filmgoers, but what seems like nothing is really a relentless amount of tension building. Why is there tension when seemingly nothing is happening? Well, two reasons: for one the movie is called HOUSE OF THE DEVIL so we know that something is going to happen involving the house, and second, the film opens with an ominous statistic about Satan worshippers in the 80’s and the old trick of exclaiming that the film is based on a true story. So going into the movie, the audience knows that something bad and Satan related is going to happen, but what and when is dangled just out of reach for the first hour—this will either really piss you off, or fully absorb you into the film—for me it was the latter. What made the film bearable for me were the great cast and the nostalgic feel of the film. All the actors involved in the film do a great job (for a horror film), of course Noonan and Woronov are aces—as they always are (not to mention very well cast as the creepy old couple), but Donahue and Gerwig’s performances are quite realistic as far as their line delivery. The film does feature some horror clichés, but doesn’t suffer from them. Of course we get the “don’t go in there” moments, and there’s a least one finely timed jump scare, but it’s the kind of clichés that make horror, horror (one bit of advice: never trust an old couple that owns a harpsichord). It’s when clichés are done to death and used to disguise a lack of plot that they can really kill a horror film dead.

The film is a throwback to late 70’s/early 80’s horror in that not only does the film take place in the 80’s, but it also it looks like a film from the early 80’s. A great little era before VHS blew up and people still went to grindhouse theaters and drive-ins. HOUSE OF THE DEVIL is chock full of 80’s nostalgia. It has some rockin’ 80’s tunes, rotary phones, feathered hair, shameful clothes, and walkmans the size of a hardcover version of War & Peace. The film’s opening credit are a big time throwback to 80’s horror, and even features a synthesizer driven theme song that could have been written by John Carpenter himself. Plus there are also clever uses of great 80’s tunes by The Greg Kihn Band (they don’t write ‘em like that anymore indeed!) and The Fixx (with goofy 80’s dancing included!). As the obsessive compulsives on IMDb will be quick to point out, there are a few continuity errors in the film, but I’ve seen the film twice and didn’t catch any of them. My advice would be to just watch the movie, Poindexter--and not obsess on unimportant details.

I’ve never seen any of Ti West’s other films, but one look at the IMDb message boards shows, he’s not well liked by some horror fans. I can’t speak about his other films, because I haven’t seen them, but his skills as a director, as far as HOUSE OF THE DEVIL is concerned, I’d say he is someone I will definitely keep my eye on. I have absolutely fallen in love with his style, which has clearly been inspired by the masters, such as Kubrick and Polanski (all pedophilia aside, he was a great director). There are some great shots in the film and some camera angles that made me smile. While many will find fault in the due because of the pace—I was never bored once, and I’ve seen the film twice. In fact I enjoyed it even more the second time because I was able to catch a lot of details that I missed the first time around. West is certainly not trying to reinvent the wheel, but he delivers a true horror film that the true horror fans will enjoy. That being said, everyone has a different take of what true horror is, so just take my adulation with a grain of salt. I should also mention that I’m a big fan of Eurohorror, which also carries the stigma of being slow and boring. So there’s a caveat emptor from the good Reverend.