"House of The Devil" hits a lot of high notes. But it's a film that isn't going to just belt them out for you right off the bat. No, it's going to make you wait for it. And it's going to make you wait a long time. Whether or not this will negatively effect the total experience for you is a matter of personal taste. But even if, as a viewer, you can only tolerate so much slow burn there is still enough in "House of The Devil" to warrant a hardy, albeit heavily footnoted recommendation.
We follow college student Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) as she takes a job babysitting for the evening. Clearly there are good reasons for her not to take the job, considering the guy offering it gives her the creeps, it's out in the middle of nowhere, her friend driving her has a bad feeling about it, and the dude lied to her about what the job actually entails, but after extorting him for $400 she decides the money is enough to risk it. This winds up to be just as bad of an idea as it could possibly have been.
"I should have asked for $500."
To the surprise of nobody who noticed that the name of the movie is "House of The Devil," satanic culty stuff is afoot, and Samantha has been selected to be a sacrifice to coincide with the total lunar eclipse that functions as the film's ticking clock. And the horrors that await her are nearly indescribably intense and, for my money at least, horrendously scary. This is one frightening movie that director Ti West has unleashed on us, and when the horror is in full gear it's less of a movie and more of a waking nightmare.
When the rites are being preformed, and the cultists and...other things...are doing their...thing..."House of The Devil" may just rival "The Exorcist" in how utterly, bone-chillingly terrifying it is. At least for me. In fact the effects and visions that Samantha begin to see are quite reminiscent of the spooky white face in "The Exorcist" that appear to scare the crap out of you. But whereas "The Exorcist" spaced those flashes out so that you had almost forgotten about it by the time the next one came up, "House of The Devil" outright punishes you with it by cramming a movie's worth of jump scares into the last 15 minutes. It's a different way of going about it, but I thought it was just as effective.
Making "House of The Devil" even more intense were fantastic performances all around, not only by our lead, Jocelin Donahue, but also Tom Noonan, the original Tooth Fairy from "Manhunter," but also AJ Bowen, who gave a very creepy performance which surprised me after seeing him be so lackluster in "Rites of Spring." And for fans of the slasher genre, "The Howling" and "The Hills Have Eyes" legend Dee Wallace even has a cameo in the beginning in a role that means nothing, but it's cool to see her there.
Now, I mentioned "the last 15 minutes." This is an important thing to bring up, because it has to do with the one thing about "House of The Devil" which will make or break it: the pacing. This movie starts slow, building up a sense of unease as we have more and more time to consider how bad of an idea this job seems to be. For about the first 30 minutes that's really all that's going on. It's just Samantha playing phone tag with the guy offering the job, talking about it with her friend, driving with her friend while talking about it, and then talking to the guy about it when they get there.
THRILL AS SHE SITS ON THE LOVE SEAT!!!
Then something happens so shocking and so brutal that it really sets the whole movie spinning on its head. Or at least it does for a time. One would expect at that point for "House of The Devil" to go in a completely different direction, but then it crawls to a snail's pace again right afterwards. For the next 40 minutes, all we do is watch Samantha in the house. That's it.
She walks around the place. She listens to music. She dances around. She watches a little TV. She orders a pizza. She eats the pizza. The glacial rate at which we are watching this girl made me start to wonder if anything bad was actually going to happen to her. After a half hour of watching her putz around the house, I seriously started to wonder whether or not the cultists just kind of forgot about the whole thing, or maybe they got a flat tire on their way to the house and were stuck somewhere out on the road. True, there's still "Grandma" upstairs somewhere, but we haven't seen her once all night. In fact she's keeping pretty much to herself. Hell, if Samantha keeps quiet she might not even know she's there.
And not having "Grandma" know you're there is for the best. Trust me.
Then the last 15 minutes hit, and everything that was slow and methodical about the last hour and change you've spent watching this movie comes completely unhinged. "House of The Devil" gets insane. Utterly, unabashedly, horrifyingly insane. And it is really a thing to behold. It's one of the best endings to any movie I've seen in a very long time.
But that being said, I can't help but feel that there was just a little too much lead-in before we got there. Slow building tension is fine, in fact it's generally how I prefer my horror movies to be, but there does come a point where it can get a little over-indulgent with it. And "House of The Devil" certainly does reach that point in the second act. At least it had the good sense to actually have a fantastic payoff, unlike the "Paranormal Activity" series, a franchise I find boring to the point of being insulting. "House of The Devil" may have just as much if not more build-up as "Paranormal Activity" does, but when it gets to the end, GEEZ was it worth it.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to decontaminate my underpants...
THE BOTTOM LINE - "House of The Devil" is a mixed bag, but the parts inside that bag that are good are absolutely delicious. If you are a fan of the slow-burn technique, this might just be the most terrifying thing you've ever seen. If not, well, you might be bored senseless for the first 80% of this movie. But trust me, stick with it. That last 20% will totally be worth it.
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