House of the Devil succeeded in making me now care about director Ti West, indefinitely, for the rest of his career. Previously, all I knew about the man was his high-profile complaints that his version of Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever was cut and hacked so it was no longer recognizable as his original, “John Waters” style edit. I scoffed at what I wrote off as pretentiousness, but after seeing what he accomplished with House of the Devil, I have no choice but to hold him at his word. House of the Devil proves that West’s grip on atmosphere, mood, and style are impeccable.
House of the Devil is about a wide-eyed college sophomore, Samantha (Jocelin Donahue), who’s strapped for cash and dying to get independent of her sexually overactive roommate. The movie starts with Dee Wallace as a real estate agent, showing Samantha the perfect new pad. Now, if only she could come up with $300 by next week to get it. (Yup, $300. Our setting is in the early 80’s, established right away by not only the low-rent, but by West’s fantastic credit sequence.)
Samantha is truly likable, hitting the right tones of smart and serious for her age, yet ultimately being unable to escape her limits as a 19 or 20 year old girl. Picture Laurie Strode, but less “shrewd heroine,” and more apt to dance around in head phones. Helping Samantha on her quest for cash is her best friend, Megan (Greta Gerwig). West’s friendship of the two is written with utter realism. While Megan is obviously a little kooky, he doesn’t fall into the cliche of having the “wild friend” and the “sober friend.” Gerwig and Donahue have chemistry as friends, and we get to see on-screen all the true to life, boring aspects of their friendship. (Like repeatedly calling a person until they answer the phone.) West also makes sure to knock-out all the things typical girls don’t do on-screen in film – like actually eating and going to the bathroom.
Anyway, Megan helps Samantha score a job as a babysitter for the Ullman family – an eccentric couple, holed up in a Victorian mansion in the country, who are really excited about the impending eclipse. Mr. Ullman (Tom Noonan) sets the pace for what continues to be a slow, slow burn, with his stilted explanations about the details of the babysitting job. (Psyche, it’s really for his elderly mother, not a child.) He implores Samantha to make herself comfortable, order a pizza, and try her best to ignore any sounds his mother may make upstairs.
So we now get to the rest of the movie: Samantha sitting in the house, using the phone, ordering a pizza, and listening to her headphones. This is all our action (save for one scene in the cemetery down the road – the movie’s only jump-in-your-seat moment) until the last 15 minutes. The movie’s opening is a text statistic about the prevalence of satanic panic in the 80s, and it takes us until the very last moments for this pay-off to occur.
While I ate up the slow, build up for almost all of the movie, even I became weary and anxious for it to finally kick in. I’ve got the sort of patience built up from years of art-house and film school movie classics, and if even my attention started to wonder, I can’t imagine that House of the Devil will sit well with the majority.
When our cult action and scares start in, I realized how long it had been since I had really seen a great, new movie about Satan. While all the earlier action in the script showed West’s strength in writing the odd, uncomfortable moments of reality that happen to all of us in our daily lives, he’s equally strong in bringing the full-on crazy. As a director, he did a great job at setting up memorable shots. (Samantha’s shadow creeping up the stairs, donning a knife, especially sticks out.) And again, I have to plug that Joceline Donahue, Tom Noonan, and Greta Gerwig all were interesting, intense, and fun to watch.
Fans of 70s and 80s cinema (not slashers, but actual movies) will most likely find something special in House of the Devil, as well as fans of well-written movies, grounded in the minutia of reality rather than an action-packed plot. Rosemary’s Baby aficionados should also seek this one out. Catch it now if you have a good theater nearby, or wait for the House of the Devil DVD release, February 2, 2010.
A footnote:
Now I don’t mean to be a pansy, and maybe this was just an issue in the particular theater I saw House of the Devil at, but for the last 15, 20 minutes of the movie, I had my hands clamped firmly over my ears. Total aural assault. If the goal was to disorient the audience through a style of noise warfare that the military should try out on hidden insurgents… mission completed. I felt the total deafening fear just as strong as Samantha was by that point. Would be very curious to hear back from anyone who had a similar experience, since I can’t tell if this was intentional, or I was just the victim of some really busted sound gear.
Tags: House of the Devil
