02/21/10 - The House of the Devil

The House of the Devil (2009, 95 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1172994/

I'd heard good things about this film so I was ready to finally check it out. A horror movie isn't something I'm all that used to watching, but from what I'd read this one seemed like one that could be respected and enjoyed even without a great familiarity for the genre.

The film stars Jocelin Donahue as Samantha, a college kid trying to earn some more money. The natural job to seek out (for a horror movie it seems) is babysitting. Unfortunately, Samantha doesn't know what kind of babysitting she is going to be doing. Also in the movie are: Megan (Greta Gerwig), Samantha's friend; Mr. and Mrs. Ulman (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov), the couple providing Samantha's employment; and Victor Ulman (AJ Bowen), their son.

I had read that The House of the Devil tries to be like a 1980s horror movie with its approach to the genre. The first thing that set the tone for me was the opening credits. I loved the opening credits with their constant freeze frame usage, bright yellow letters, and blasting music. It was a simple thing but it immediately got me in the mood for the movie. Adding to that was the choice of Jocelin Donahue as heroine. From my understanding, a horror movie has to have a beautiful and adorable lead female to really hook the viewer. Donahue is an amazing choice then because she fills all those roles perfectly. She was far and away the best part of the movie.

On the other end of the spectrum we have the worst part of the movie. After some great credits and a really good build up to the actual babysitting, we get not much of anything. The build up to the babysitting is great with some obvious allusions to what's going to be coming up through dialogue or just how everything unfurls. But then Samantha is in the house all by herself (kind of) and the movie has to survive on weak scares from creaking doors and a banging upstairs. The outside scene where Victor kills Megan is pretty good, but actually inside the house there's not much. Finally we get some action and scares in about the last ten minutes of the movie. However, even here, I never was really on the edge of my seat as things starting going haywire.

However, I really did like the cinematography of the movie. Most notably, I liked the couple of outside shots of the house with Samantha looking out through the windows. Also, I just overall really liked the camera placement. A lot of times it wouldn't move much for long shots and I liked this feature. Not being familiar with the horror genre, I don't know if this was purposeful or just how the director wanted to do things. In any case, I liked this.

Overall, I gave this film a 6/10. A lot of things were really cool about The House of the Devil and it seemed to pay homage to the 1980s horror genre pretty well (and I know there were quite a few more things that I missed). But the thrill and the tension just weren't there for me. But Jocelin Donahue was and that kind of made up for some of the negatives.

[Note: Due to a voting update, I have changed the rating of The House of the Devil to a 5/10.]