The House of the Devil Review
Posted by Joseph Lee on 11.10.2009
Are you sure this is a 2009 release?
Starring:
*Jocelin Donahue as Samantha Hughes
*Tom Noonan as Mr. Ulman
*Mary Woronov as Mrs. Ulman
*Greta Gerwig as Megan
*AJ Bowen as Victor Ulman
*Dee Wallace as Landlady
Story: In the 1980s, college student Samantha Hughes takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse. She slowly realizes her clients harbor a terrifying secret; they plan to use her in a satanic ritual.
Trivia: Taking place in the 1980s, the film was made with 16mm film, giving it a retro stylistic look that matched the decade. Similarly, some aspects of the culture of the 1980s (i.e. 80's hair, Samantha's 1980 Sony Walkman) are seen in the film as signifiers of the decade.
Do you have a desire to go back to the days of the 1980's and watch the low-budget horror films that would eventually fill the video shelves of your local rental store? Do you think the current era of horror is full of too much gore and remakes? Director Ti West feels the same way and has painstakingly went out of his way to bring you The House of the Devil. Yes, it's almost as if he reached back through a wormhole, grabbed this movie from the cutting room floor and brought it to 2009 for those who are sick of the current horror climate. I know what you're thinking. What am I talking about?
Simply put, The House of the Devil is a film that is probably the best throw back to a forgotten era of horror I've ever seen. I say this because of the lengths the filmmaker went through in order to make this feel like a product of the decade it's set in. If I had watched this without any information about what year it came out (and it just came out a week ago) I would swear it's a low budget 80's horror film. I'm not saying this as a hyperbole to get you to see it, I'm speaking honestly. The way it's shot, the score, even the story structure make it feel like it came from either the late seventies or the early eighties back when this type of movie was all the rage. Even Grindhouse, which I loved, couldn't pull that off. Sure it added film grain and other neat tricks, but they just looked like new films that were damaged. The House of the Devil looks old. For that alone it seems like I should recommend it just as a curiosity. The look of a film can only bring it so far. What about the quality?
The film begins as Samantha ( is making the final deal on an apartment with the landlady (played by Dee Wallace, an 80's horror icon making a cameo that was very appreciated) when she realizes she doesn't have money for the first month's rent. So she responds to an ad for a babysitting job posted by an eccentric man. Something seems off about him, but it's easy to dismiss him as just a odd man. In fact, we don't really learn anything's wrong until about thirty minutes in when the movie delivers a very shocking scene that's out of nowhere and sets the tone for the remainder of the film.
Ti West obviously loves his Alfred Hitchcock. I say this because the suspense aspires to be Hitchcockian in tone, From that shocking scene mentioned above, the rest of the film's events until the reveal go for a "bomb under the table" type of suspense. We know something is seriously wrong, but this girl has yet to suspect danger. It's a noble attempt, but I think that is also one of this movie's biggest flaws. I appreciate the effort to go with a slow, suspenseful mood, but the pacing of the film is more lethargic than tense and at a running time of 95 minutes, it doesn't even let the girl in on what's wrong until an hour into the run time. It just feels like it takes forever to get to the point. I applaud the attempt but I think perhaps it's drawn out a little too much, taking away it's potency.
When the movie does reach it's climax, it's a wild one. There's lots of blood and death, as apparently it was being saved for this moment. I like saving it all for the finale. In this movie's case, due to the problem I mentioned earlier of stretching out the story, the ending ends up getting short-changed. Everything races towards the end credits with such a speed you no longer have time to digest what is going on or even fear for the girl's safety. It's like at this point the audience demands the film wrap up, so it does as fast as it possibly can.
What of the acting? I think Tom Noonan (who will always be Robocop 2's villain Cain to me) steals the show with the kind of menacing yet subdued performance he's played before. There's just something about evil people who act really calm and somber that creeps me out more than scenery-chewing. Which brings me to Mary Woronov. She plays it the opposite and as over-the-top as possible. Luckily we also have AJ Bowen (from The Signal, which I enjoyed) trying to match Noonan in the creep factor and Jocelin Donahue playing a very convincing heroine. I'd say the acting is well worth the price of admission.
I just think that at the end of the day, The House of the Devil feels like a great early 80's satanic horror homage (complete with creepy performances, an awesome stylized look and appropriate amounts of blood) that ended up being damaged, almost beyond repair by it's pacing. Someone fell asleep in the editor's chair and as a result it nearly puts the audience to sleep. That's unfortunate, because this movie could have been great. Instead it will have to settle for "good".
The 411: The House of the Devil is a film that was created with a lot of love for the decade it strives to resemble. It looks like it was ripped out of the 80's and that's certainly a point in it's favor. Unfortunately, the suspense is drawn out too much due to lethargic pacing and it ends up lacking the punch it would have had otherwise. If there had been more work on the content of the film in addition to it's look, this could have been something special. As it is, it's just a slow, if entertaining homage to a forgotten era.
