The House of the Devil (2009)

The House of the Devil
2009
Horror
Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan

It seems like no other genre of movies suffers from as many horrible entries as the horror movie genre. Finding a truly great horror movie can really be a hard thing to accomplish sometimes. So I became rather excited when "The House of the Devil" began to get a lot of positive buzz. However unlike other recent horror successes like [rec] or The Descent, I do not understand why this movie got good reviews from anyone. Simply, The House of the Devil sucks. It is easily one of the most boring movies I have ever watched. Since it is only 93 minutes long, fitting about 4 hours of boredom into it is really quite an accomplishment.

It is about a broke college student, Samantha (Jocelin Donahue), who is hired to watch after a man's elderly mother while he goes out. Eventually you find out the man is a memeber of a satanic cult (hence the name of the movie), and that Samantha is really there for another darker reason.

Literally nothing happens for the first 75 minutes. It is either her walking around campus, or her sitting on the couch. Then finally in the last 20 minutes when stuff actually does happen its not interesting and not explained enough at all, with an ending that is basically impossible (based on what happens before it). I would say even without changing the plot greatly, the director could have made things seem a lot less boring my making a few changes. A lot of shots just seem to hang out for a few extra seconds for no reason at all. And there is no music at all during the first half, so not only is it boring but it is quiet too, like you are in a library or something. There was also really nothing to build tension at all. I mean at one of the "exciting parts" in the first hour is when Samantha hears a noise coming from the kitchen drain...scared yet? I didn't think so.

This movie really only has two positives going for it. The first being that Jocelin Donahue as Samantha is really cute. The other positive is they copied 80s horror movies so effectively (film quality, title font, clothing, etc.) that I would have easily believed that this movie was actually made in the 80s and wasn't just made to look like it. Now just being passable as an 80s horror movie in itself isn't necessarily a great thing, but since that's what they were trying to accomplish, I give them credit for achieving their goal.

If you hear somebody talking about a great new horror movie called "The House of the Devil" laugh at them, or smack some sense into them. Because it is certainly not a "great", "good", or even "barely decent" new horror movie. It is just 90 minutes of boredom on DVD.

2 out of 5 Stars
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