DVD Review: HOUSE (Lionsgate/Namesake Entertainment/Circle Media)

Mike LoManaco

Studio Name: Lionsgate
MPAA Rating: R
Disc/Transfer Information: 1.78:1 Widescreen
Tested Audio Track: English Dolby Digital 5.1
Director: Robby Henson
Starring Cast: Michael Madsen, Bill Moseley

PLOT ANALYSIS:

I'm either getting too old, or something is wrong with my dogs that ain't all barking...but I just don't get these "psychological thrillers" and modern "horror" films that seem to appear on a Blockbuster shelf and Netflix cue every couple of days or so -- how long are these titles in theaters? Do they ever get to theaters? Are they all remakes of Asian-oriented originals, or did an American director actually have an idea of his own and finally got a studio such as Lionsgate to sign off on it? While I ponder these questions, I really don't know where to start when it comes to 2007's House. Boy, was this one all over the place; originally marketed in fast-paced teaser campaigns as a classic haunted house tale, it ended up being a bizarre hybrid of films like Wrong Turn, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House of Wax (the remake with -- vomit, vomit -- Paris Hilton) and a gaggle of others that evade my mind right this second, but which have come out in the past year or so. An odd casting choice here was Michael Madsen, who has done some great work in the past on things like Donnie Brasco and Reservoir Dogs but just didn't seem to fit in with the "made for TV cast" including Reynaldo Rosales (TV's Medium), Heidi Dippold (from The Sopranos) and Bill Moseley (known most for his role in The Devil's Rejects) -- still, there was an opportunity for Madsen to try out his acting chops in a different context and genre, and I suppose at the end of the day he comes across creepy enough; he just didn't have a great deal of talent behind the writing and directing to work with.

House is actually based -- like so many other films it seems nowadays -- on a supernatural novel by Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti. I didn't read the book, and so I am not sure how this adaptation holds up under authenticity scrutiny, but I will say this sure really isn't about a "haunted house" per se as the title would lead you to believe, and even if there was a film with the same name released years ago with that aforementioned premise. The events, frustratingly as usual, splinter into dozens of plot directions, and we have all the prerequisite cues for modern-day horror, such as the creepy little girl visions, the car getting stranded in a storm, the terrified young people with nothing on their minds save for proving how macho they are with their goatees and tight-fitting T-shirts. You know the drill. Much like the recent Mirrors and a handful of other terror films to be released of late, the film's opening sequence depicts something that happened to cause the "evil" consequence to follow later on -- usually, someone is getting murdered, or someone is getting molested by a sick, twisted relative or something of the sort, and this sets off a chain reaction which affects different characters later on. Here, a man is pointing a rifle at his terrified wife, who pleads with him through her running makeup, in what appears to be a dark old house. Needless to say brains are blown out, and we enter the beginning of the main plot of House.

Rosales and Dippold are driving in a green Mustang convertible along a Georgia highway. Rosales' character is a writer and Dippold is an up and coming country singer. As the couple quibbles and Dippold attempts to apply nail polish while hubby Rosales drives a bit recklessly, a State Trooper appears in the Mustang's rearview mirror. For some odd reason, Rosales doesn't slow down or pull over, and a crazed Madsen appearing as the trooper flies by the couple. They approach a crash scene a few miles down the road, apparently involving an old rusted truck that went into a ditch, and run into the creepy cop again; it's obvious the filmmakers wanted Madsen to play this role up like the oddball sheriff characters in films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake or any of the dozen or more horror films that revolve around a symbol such as this. Once Madsen successfully creeps the couple out with offbeat remarks and they apparently get out of a speeding ticket due to Dippold's flirtatious approaches to Madsen, the couple is off on the highway again, following directions the cop gives them. If this is beginning to sound like The Hills Have Eyes, I thought so too.

Alas -- we have the typical "supernatural horror" element a la Gothika in which the couple see something in the road (there are hints of Jeepers Creepers here too), crash their car and appear stranded. Next to the "old farm equipment" they believe they hit is a BMW with flat tires, indicating others have been stranded on this road. They make their way to a desolate inn which appears to be empty until they run into another young couple, one of which appears to be a Donny Osmond lookalike. Be that as it may, this is the couple who apparently owned the BMW back at the crash site, but that seems to be the least of their worries, as the four soon run into a creepy old lady (Leslie Easterbrook), her demented son (Moseley) and a deranged "maintenance man" of some kind. This inn seems to be run by these three, and they give the Addams Family a good name. There is some sexual chemistry between some of the young people in the group; the other guy's girlfriend has her eye on Rosales and the girlfriend eyes Dippold up and down a few times. But what's worse is that the old lady and her creepy "staff" have set a "dinner" for the four of them, and you know things are going to go south when the off-the-wall Moseley continues repeating "You're pruuuurty...." to one of the girls and the guys have to calm him down.

House is indeed a strange mix of all the films I previously mentioned plus a few others including Vacancy; all of these deal with perverted, twisted sub-humans getting some kind of pleasure from the humiliation, isolation and torture of young people in varying situations. Perhaps Tobe Hooper began this trend with his original Chainsaw Massacre, but you can almost feel the plagiarism of sorts in all these modern films as they attempt to mimic the paranoia and desperation exhibited in that classic. The premise of House then gets revealed: It seems the sins of these four people (along the lines of Flatliners) are somehow tapped into, and there's a reason why they're all trapped in this house (the inn); they are soon made aware of a looming figure which the innkeepers call "The Tin Man" who is trying to break into the inn through the glass roof panels. The creepy old lady tells them stories about this figure, and soon a tin can is dropped into the house with a message written on it. One of these young people have to give "The Tin Man" one life and he will let the rest live. This had echoes of Saw; soon, this masked figure is stalking the four young people through an underground maze below the inn which appears to them as individual tortures for their past sins.

Rosales and Dippold lost their daughter in an ice skating "accident" in which flashbacks reveal he was too busy writing a book while she was too busy on the phone with her agent; the little girl drowned under the ice as a result. Now, the two face this "sin" somehow under the inn, with repeated visions of the accident -- but it's made so unclear just how the "house" or this "Tin Man" or the creepy old lady is actually doing this to the couples that it seems unfathomable. I started to lose interest at this point, but the couples at some time break up and go into different areas of this underground maze, and there's a revealing of the house as some kind of devil worship site, based on the pentagram that is spewing black dust and exhibiting Satan's eyes and snorting nose on one of the walls. Rosales' character ends up running into a creepy little girl whose eyes are so black it looks like she went 10 rounds with Tyson in one of the maze's rooms, and she walks him through what this "Tin Man" wants and how to hide from him.

At this point, I really didn't know what was going on, but eventually, a secret is revealed involving who the little girl is, who the "Tin Man" was and how it all comes together regarding Madsen's character. I was as confused as a nun in the middle of an all-out orgy with Vivid **** stars. The very end of the film attempts to be "clever" like the head-scratching conclusion of Ghost Ship, but it was ridiculous -- without giving too much away, "Jack" and "Stephanie" (Rosales and Dippold) make their way from a self-destructing inn to find themselves back at their crash site, but the site is somehow different, and we're suddenly thrust into a Sixth Sense-like situation, where the two wonder if they're really alive from that crash they had on the road days before...:rolleyes:

HOUSE REVIEW CONTINUED BELOW...

Mike LoManaco

HOUSE REVIEW CONTINUED...

VIDEO QUALITY:

Without letterboxing due to its 1.78:1 framing, this transfer exhibited a cold, dark appearance which was undoubtedly a stylistic choice by Robby Henson; there's a grainy, gritty appearance which compounds this, and most sequences just don't look that eye-popping. Even the rainy Georgia highway scenes outdoors don't fare well on this encode, as they come off being subdued and a bit lifeless. Interior sequences in the house will test your display's black levels as the varying degrees go in and out of shades throughout the film's run time. There's some flickering compression noise in these dark sequences as well, but I really do feel all these were stylistic photography choices.

AUDIO QUALITY:

Lionsgate equipped House with a Dolby Digital track that doesn't really do House any justice. Most of the action remains in the front three channels, and surround usage was sparse. Occasionally, there was a rumble from the LFE signal in the mix, and it really boomed during the final sequence where the inn begins to implode and break up, but for the most part, the bass was shallow. Most surprising though, was the lack of surround usage -- and there were many missed opportunities here. A rainstorm sequence didn't really creep into the rear soundstage as I thought it would, and overall ambience was subtle. Not really a standout in the audio department, either.

SUMMARY:

I know it's been done before -- The Amityville Horror, House on Haunted Hill, The Haunting -- but perhaps if they would have stuck with the premise of an actual haunted roadside inn of some kind, like a good followup to 1408 or something, House may have worked. Instead, we get creepy little girls, a sadistic **** playing games with a group like in Saw and underlying psychological and supernatural themes which, once again, don't amount to a good motion picture or a satisfying ending.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

I recommend only a rental if you can find it cheap -- like something along the lines of a Red Box. Some may have different mileage with this.

Thank you, as always, friends, for reading, and please comment away with any questions or discussions regarding House!