Tuesday, August 17, 2010

House

Not House the television show (which I think is actually called House MD) and not House the William Katt movie from the 1980s (which I saw when I was in high school; it didn't live up to its tagline "Ding dong, you're dead"). This is yet another House.
I like to call it House Of 1000 Things Borrowed From House Of 1000 Corpses. You see, the movie starts out with a bickering couple driving down some back roads in some southern state or another. They get directions from a local (SPOILER: who seems trustworthy to the characters even though everyone in the audience knows better) which take them down a not-often-used road. There their tire "mysteriously" blows out. They don't have a spare and it's raining, so they take refuge in the nearest giant, creepy house and meet another stranded couple. Matriarchal Leslie Easterbrook (okay, so she wasn't in House Of 1000 Corpses, but she did take over the Mother Firefly role in The Devil's Rejects, so I'm going to allow it) ropes the two couples into staying for dinner, which is when Bill Moseley makes a sudden entrance and scares the two couples. Later in the movie, the creepy son-of-the-house dresses one of the women up like a dolly.
Other than those blatant similarities to my favorite movie of all time, House was really pretty interesting. It was bloodless and full of a lot of religious stuff that I didn't really get (about a year ago I read an article in Rue Morgue about Christian horror movies, and House was mentioned, so it was pretty much a given that there was going to be religious stuff that I didn't really get), but I liked the way it was shot and there was one scene that was rather moving.
What I didn't like was the ending. It should have ended at a certain point, but it kept going and defeated what I thought the message of the movie was going to be.
Oh well, whatever, it was pretty good anyway. It needed more Bill Moseley (most movies do), some of the twists were kind of "Well, duh" and I'm generally pretty uncomfortable with religious overtones in my movies, but this one was good enough that I didn't mind.

End of line.
-Sally

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