Jaden Jordan
- Mar 8, 2020
- 3 min read

House of the Devil (2009)

Updated: Aug 3, 2021

The Breakdown: When a young woman pressed for cash in the 80s accepts a babysitting job on the lunar eclipse, the details start getting stranger and stranger, then she explores a strangers house for, I dunno, the entire movie, then there's some blood. The End.

Watch If: You're head over heels for anything about the US Satanic Panic era.

Not If: You actually want a good movie.

SECONDARY FACTS

Overall Rating: 2.2

Length: 1:35

Country: USA

Language: English

Scare Factor: 0

Gore Factor: Lots of gore in concentration at the end.

REVIEW

THE QUICK AND DIRTY

I thought this had promise, but it turns out this film is 1:20 minutes of nothing happening, and 15 minutes where everyone working on it forgot how to make a movie.

PREMISE:2

There is nothing novel about this idea. The 80s. A babysitter. Stabby Stabby. In fact, this idea is so over done, that next month, I might do a "babysitters beware" theme, just to make a point about how many films follow this exact idea line.

However, the idea that this film is deffinately a homage to the classic slashers of the 70s and 80s, is very clear, and the makers of this film certainly loved the genre they were trying to emulate. And

ACTING:3

The acting is fine. The writing is not fine.

AUDIO AND VISUALS:2

The first part of this film is incredibly well shot. The colors are tasty, and the idea that this takes place in the 80s is incredibly well conveyed through the sheer visuals of the setup. And most of the film has this nice, comfortable palette.

But then we get alot of long, drawn out shots framing things that never become relevant again, and the final burst of the film is shot in an entirely different style, that not only ruins that part of the film, but retroactively unravels all of the professionalism in the beginning.

And that last part, its bad. A handful of grainy, low saturation shaky cam shots, I assume to try and make it scarier, coupled with a couple of zooms where the person holding the camera literally just runs up to people and sticks the camera in their face.

(That last point is really only a problem in that its suggestive of a first person eiwpoint, and typically implies that there's a character, or something else, in the spot where the camera would be. In this film, there is not.)

In short, this film manages to do a complete 180. It honestly feels like the ending of this film was done by an entirely different set of people. As sleek and visually engaging as the beginning is, the end is just as scratchy, confusing and cheap, and honestly makes the film feel like a film school group project, where one person who knew what they were doing did there best, and everyone else shirked off and crammed some shit together the day before the whole thing was due.

ATMOSPHERE:2

I think the part that upsets me the most is that, for the first twenty minutes, I was entirely on board. The cinematography was well done, the set up was, while tropey, engaging enough, and the characters fit into the type of movie I thought this was going to be.

I wanted to like it. It felt like something I would like. But then 20 minutes became forty, and nothing happened. Then something happened, once, and I thought things were happening, but then nothing else happened until there were about 15 minutes left in the movie.

DELIVERY:2

There was something in this movie that I sincerely wish had gotten to shine, and I can't put my finger on what it was. But somewhere by the halfway ark, this film smothered something that could have been amazing. I do really hope that the makers of this film get another chance, because there's something in there, some nugget of something I want to watch, that just seems to have... gotten lost long the way.