Streaming Availability: Peacock
We have traveled far-enough through horror history that the snake is beginning to eat its tail. Filmmakers are no longer inspired by legends or the occult, they're inspired by the very movies we have been talking about all month. We're now in the era where many filmmakers were born after The Exorcist, and living memory of a time before that movie is disappearing.
The House of the Devil was released in 2009, on the cutting edge of the biggest fashion trend of the next decade plus: being obsessed with the Eighties. In just horror alone we had the Eighties-themed It Follows, The Guest, Beyond the Black Rainbow, Turbo Kid, The Void, and many more. What's interesting is that the early-2000s were stuffed with a billion remakes of actual Eighties horror movies, yet none of them were interested in the style or aesthetics of the period. Then by the 2010s, the remakes dried up, but suddenly we wanted New Wave synth soundtracks and practical gore effects again.
The House of the Devil is not made to just play with retro elements, Ti West is trying to make a movie that was ripped out of 1981 and only appeared in cinemas in 2009. House was shot in 16 MM, I believe that's real buzzing film grain, not digital fakery like many other films use. Within a few minutes of the movie, we get a sudden lurching zoom forward on our leading lady, Jocelin Donahue, to clearly demonstrate this is a camera zoom, not dollying-in. The cinematography in general is rather rough. There's a lot of jittery camera moves, showing off the crudeness of the "old technology".
Plus unlike 90% of horror films from 2009, House of the Devil has colors that are not blue and orange. The horror movies were way too color-corrected and looked terrible. It is amazing how much more dated and ridiculous the then-current aesthetics of the late 2000s look compared to the timeless look of the early Eighties.
I sure hope you like Thomas Dolby and The Fixx, you're gonna get a lot of their music. Speaking of cameos for Eighties fans, a good chunk of the cast are old cult film pros. Dee Wallace, the mom in every movie during Reagan's presidency, plays a landlord. The villains are Mr. and Mrs. Ulman, played by Tom Noonan (Manhunter, RoboCop 2, a lot of Charlie Kaufman films) and Mary Woronov (Death Race 2000, Eating Raoul, Chopping Mall). That name "Ulman" is almost certainly a reference to a minor character from The Shining.
The innocent young girls caught in this plot are our POV character, Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) and her best friend, Megan (future director, Greta Gerwig). Samantha is struggling to pay for an apartment so takes a sketchy babysitting job, that gets increasingly sketchy, but she can overlook if she's paid a full month's rent for one night, $400
Curiously though, Ti West's artistic influences are not grounded much in actual Satanic horror. He's borrowing a ton from Halloween with his slow-paced babysitter thriller plot. Ti West is not shy about his homages, his recent film X was a passionate love affair with Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Despite "Devil" being in the title, West seems to not be terribly interested in demons or the occult. He really loves the slow build of a young woman alone at night, vulnerable from all sides as the blackness outside the windows become portals to mysterious terror. I think he's correct, it is terrifying set-up and the movie is full of suspense. Yet House of the Devil being about a devil is largely incidental. It could have been anything out there, really does not matter what.
The opening of this film talks about the Satanic Panic of the Eighties. House of the Devil also tongue-in-cheek claims to be based on a true story. (Good one, Ti.) But beyond one off-hand reference that Mr. Ulman makes about "stories in the news", this has nothing to do with kidnapping children or abuse in preschools. (And even then, it has the story backwards: the horror did not come from Satan, it came from paranoid parents.) This group of Satanists are more the shabby Semetic-coded conspiracy of Rosemary's Baby than taken from the MTV-era headlines. Samantha is not even babysitting a child, it turns out this job in a big spooky house in the middle of nowhere is to watch Ulman's "mother-in-law". The old woman will keep to herself, please ignore any unsettling noises.
I'm actually unclear if we ever get an explicit demon. There is a monstrous priestess character that pukes blood that impregnates you with the Antichrist. That's more fun than the Eighties headlines, to be fair. The actual Satanic Panic was not fun.
Since everything about House of the Devil is about old stuff, this is a movie obsessed with obsolete technology. Samantha rocks out to her old cassette Walkman. Landlines are very important to the plot. Samantha is left alone and has no way to reach Megan since Megan has to be physically by her phone at home. Samantha first calls Mr. Ulman at a payphone and leaves a message, only for him to immediately call her back. That might not seem too strange now, but caller ID did not exist until 1989. This is actually the first indication that something supernatural is happening.
House of the Devil is a very patient movie. Your imagination does more to create the paranoia and tension than any ghoul-ery. We do get a dramatic splatter scene a half hour in, just in case you're falling asleep. (If you really hated Barbie and are mad at Greta Gerwig, House of the Devil is your movie.) The final climax is full of gore and satisfying vengeance on some of the villains. However, I think the big set-pieces are the least interesting stuff here. I've often had quiet nights alone in dark houses, and no other movie quite captures the fear of being alone with the monsters you conjure in your head as well as The House of the Devil.
Next Time! Another indie horror movie set mostly in one creepy house, only this one is very interested in the occult, A Dark Song.
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