Simply A Masterpiece

Sick Product of a Sick System

Highly Overrated But Still Good

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

A review of The House of the Devil If you love slow building suspense and not knowing what is coming around the next corner, you will love this movie. However for myself, I found the movie to be rather boring. The film had a really slow build with not much build up for an epic finale that lasted about five minutes. This movie was the biggest tease of a horror movie I have seen. The artistry and techniques throughout the film were beautifully done, however the actual build up and story was rather bland. I was expecting the movie to be much more suspenseful than a girl wandering a house for 50 minutes. There were maybe two points throughout the entire movie where my heartrate increased, other than that I was just trying to stay focused. If you can get past the slow burn throughout the first 75 minutes of the movie then the ending is well worth it. I just had higher hopes for more stalker-ish, satanic ritual and a creepier house than were presented throughout the film. However, with plot and story set aside, this film is a work of art. The style in which it was made to replicate an 80s movie was beautifully done. It hardly felt like I was watching a film made in 2009. The costumes and soundtracks were brilliant, adding to the suspense and feel of an 80s horror flick. The low lighting effects as well as low and canted camera angles created incredible visual effects along with the 16mm film added a haunting effect.

This movie is extremely true to the eighties. Although I didn't live in that time, I have seen many of the movies from then and the editing is incredible. It is slow at the beggining, but the director and writer uses this to develop fear as the girl hears strange noises.

This film won me over. Though some say it's too slow or doesn't pay off at the end I believe it has all the right elements. Samantha, the main character, is very likable (not lovable) and give off a Margot Kidder-type vibe both with her looks and acting. What I love, and what I think a lot of newer movies lack, is the use of space. The space allows you to fill the void with your own mind and just like good music, makes the loud scary parts much louder and scarier by contrast. I hope to see more movies that emulate the greatest era of horror, in my opinion, the late 70's early 80's.

Spoiler alerts ahead, READ AT OWN DISCRETION! House of the Devil leaves the audience terrified and interested. While watching, one could predict when something would happen, even if it was uncertain of what would happen. The doorbell for the pizza delivery is meant to be unexpected, but to those paying attention to timing it was not. When Samantha knocked on the door and on the other side there were dead bodies, it was clear that the mother was not behind the door, but something else more sinister was. What made this movie so great was that even though predictions could be made that something would happen, the audience is still left completely petrified. The suspenseful aspect of the movie is how TI West kept everyone on the edge of their seats. During the pentagram scene while the physical act of rape was not done, it was very apparent that the ram's head on her stomach and the blood dripping down onto her was meant to impregnate her. The whole idea of the pentagram and the summoning of the devil is something that terrifies me to the core. The parallels of being raped in real life by a man and the movie I think is what terrifies so many women. Because in real life, when a woman is raped and is found to be pregnant, there are so many thoughts that run through her head. Does she keep it? Does she abort it? Will she be reminded of the demon when she looks at the baby? While being raped and impregnated by the devil is not necessarily a possibility in life, the ideology behind it is.