The Bottom Line
Pros
- Interesting setup
- Solid cast
Cons
- Sloppy story
- Tame action
- Melodramatic
- Predictable
Description
- Starring Michael Madsen, Reynaldo Rosales, Bill Moseley, Heidi Dippold, Julie Ann Emery, J.P. Davis, Leslie Easterbrook
- Directed by Robby Henson
- Rated R
- DVD Release Date: April 7, 2009
Guide Review - 'House' DVD Review
Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti are perhaps the two most popular novelists in the niche of Christian-themed horror, so teaming up seems like a safe bet for a quality product...Right?House has an intriguing setup: as bickering couple Jack and Stephanie drive through the middle of nowhere, they get two flat tires. They walk to a nearby bed and breakfast, the Wayside Inn, where they find two other guests, Randy and Leslie, and three oddball proprietors: Betty and her two adult sons, Pete and Stewart.
The guests sense that something "ain't quite right." As they start to leave, a shadowy figure outside threatens them with a gun, forcing them back in. Betty explains that he's the "Tin Man," someone who punishes the guilty. The Tin Man explains that he won't kill them if they give him a dead body by sunrise.
The guests struggle with the hotel owners and amongst themselves as they try to figure out how to placate the Tin Man. Complicating matters are the visions of past indiscretions that haunt the guests and the dark force that implores them to kill one another.
For a movie with so much going on, House is surprisingly dull and uninspired. Perhaps because of the double authorship, there is a messy, too-many-cooks feel to the plot, which tosses in elements of backwoods horror, haunted houses, serial killers and demonic possession. The characters are uninteresting and interchangeable, the climax is melodramatic, the requisite "twist" is predictable, the good-versus-evil theme is vague and generic and the morality -- in which people are punished for dubious "sins" like killing people who abused them as children -- is questionable.
Despite its Christian inclination, House wants to be dark and disturbing, but it's actually tame and downright saccharine; how it got an R rating is beyond me.
The DVD
No special features.
Movie: D+
DVD: F
