House of the Devil

(2009) ****

The late 60's to early 80's brought us a rash of horror subgenre films about Satanist cults. House of the Devil is an homage to these films -- a period piece, with characters sporting feathered haircuts and puff jackets. It's also shot on 16mm film to give it a vintage grainy look. In fact the only real giveaways that we're not watching a movie from the eighties are the wrinkled faces of Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov.


That House of the Devil is contemporary gives it an advantage over the Satanic panic films that inspired it: modern movies draw from a deeper talent pool than movies made in earlier decades. Writer/Director Ti West is trained at a higher level than a lot of his predecessors in the genre probably were. House of the Devil feels well studied -- it's very well shot and the script and the dialogue are unpretentious and convincing.


The story goes, Samantha needs her first month's rent on her very first college apartment, and she only has a couple days to come up with it. She takes a babysitting job out in the countryside. She's got reason to mistrust the family hiring her, The Ulmans. They mislead her or outright lie to her more than once before she's even at their house, and her best friend (and ride back to town) Megan exhorts her to take a hint and skedaddle. But Vincent Ulman (Noonan) offers Sam extra money for her inconvenience (enough to cover the rent). And despite the obviously suspicious circumstances, there's something in his voice that sounds like sincerity.

The tempo of the movie slows to a crawl after the Noonans leave. We spend a lot of time following Sam as she wanders around the house. Slow and quiet at first, just snooping around to stave off boredom. Later on, she slaps on a pair of headphones (remember, this is walkman era -- really huge walkman era) and goes twirling about the house to The Fixx. As the night ticks on and things get stranger, her steps grow more cautious and anxious.


This is kind of make or break time for the movie. If you like your movies to get to the point, you may find these scenes to be a drag. I watched it with my mom and that was her chief complaint, although she conceded that the rest of the stuff was well done. I had talked this movie up a lot before we saw it (I'd caught it earlier in the year), so I was relieved that it at least mostly lived up to her standards. I'm also *really* relieved there's no nudity in it -- may I never again see a movie that has bare ass while my mom is present.

If the movie were in less capable hands -- if the script and the acting hadn't already proven to be good -- this would feel like nothing more than filler. But I've always been a fan of watching characters do things in silence, so this kind of stuff works for me. Also, the breaks in the monotony are effective enough, and the moments where the movie's dread level spikes are dread-ful enough to be worth the time it takes to get there. In any case, it's only 90 minutes, so even if you think of it as filler, you're not wasting much of your day on it.

House of the Devil is a subtle piece of work, the scariest I've seen this year.