Movie Details
| Title: | The House of the Devil | |
| Director: | Ti West | |
| Year: | 2009 | |
| Genre: | Horror | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.10.24 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (2)
- The Roost
- The Sacrement
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.10.24 | Internet | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2024 Next up is Ti West. I saw The Roost and hated it but his name kept popping up as part of that late-2000s class of horror like Adam Winguard and Simon Barrett, intertwined with those mumblecore directors (another genre I hated) like Joe Swanberg and the Duplass brothers. Plus many of those guys found a modicum of heat from Fantastic Fest so they came to Austin a lot around that time and I didn't really like any of their 'tudes. It further reinforced my decision to not bother with the actual movie industry and just keep my love as an audience member. I think I liked Ti's performance in You're Next better than anything I saw him direct. He made a thinly-veiled Jonestown movie that would've been decent if he called it Jonestown but as such it came off feeling kind of fake. And did I mention how much I did not like The Roost? But then he made this damn movie which everyone said was great. Then The Innkeepers which people kinda liked, and now he's found success on Netflix with these Mia Goth movies so I figured what the hell. Let's give this a try. The one thing I'd heard about this was that it was a slow burn. Yeah right. More like absolutely nothing happens for 80% of the movie. He's going so hard for a 80s slasher vibe here but without the slashing. Going for Rosemary's Baby, getting Rosemary's Cousin. I will say I thought it was ok. It was fun to see Greta Gerwig again pre-Frances Ha when I thought she wasn't that great (I thought she wasn't that great here as well, but I did like Lady Bird and her career as a director has really taken off thanks to Barbie). It's also great casting. You can't ask for a creepier couple than Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov. AJ Bowen I went to Salt Lick once and he was very personable, always struck me as a genre version of Ryan Reynolds. And a cameo from Dee Wallace is always welcome. Lead Jocelin Donahue also delivers a good performance, there's just not enough going on for me story-wise to really engage me. Thanks to the title and the movie's existence I know the creepy couple is up to something creepy so it's just a lot of waiting around until it finally happens. The ending is decent but still falls into a few logic traps (why didn't she take the gun? why didn't she shoot Noonan first? the audience wants more! As I recall, that's what made You're Next better than it should've... a lead character who's not a complete idiot). Better than The Roost, but what isn't. I'm in no hurry to see X or XXX or Pearl. |
