Review Tuesday: The House of the Devil (2009)

The House of the Devil

A college coed in need of money takes a babysitting job, during an eclipse of the moon, that will change her life.

With this whole quarantine thing going on Mrs. Baxojayz and I have been spending more time together and watching more terrible movies. This is one of them. Set in the 80s, a very attractive college coed named Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) needs rent money BADLY. So she makes an ill-advised decision and takes a baby-sitting job. It turns out to be for a family that's some sort of Satanic Cult planning on using her for a ritual to make her the vessel for bringing the incarnation of some beast into our world.

Or, at least that's my assumption after all is said and done.

The movie is over one and a half hours and there is very little scare of suspense in it. Most of the characters are either annoying or over-the-top creepy. The entire 80s motif was kinda fun, with the hairstyles, acid washed jeans and a Walkman the size of a modern Blu-Ray player. The star Jocelin Donahue is really good looking so it kinda helps you to hang in there to see what horror befalls her. Her nemesis in the movie, Mr Ullman is played by Tim Noonan who you may know better as Cain from Robocop. He was quite excellent as super creepy old dude.

Getting back to the 80s motif. I like the way they recreated the entire 80s feel, that was fine, but they even wanted to entire film to seem like it was actually made in the 80s, not just set in that time.

All in all, I would say this movie was disappointing. You keep waiting for something to happen. There's little suspense. Not much in the way of horror. Some of the violence made no sense. No explanations were given. Some serious continuity issues. When it ended we both just sighed and grunted our disapproval. 

If you really wanted to waste an hour and a half, this might be a way to go but I wouldn't spend any money on it.

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