Nothing home-sweet-home about this House

There is nothing cheery about this Christian horror film, which shows you that a scary movie doesn't need to glorify pre-marital sex or contain language or graphic bloody images for shock value in order to be good, and that a Christian horror can be just as effectively scary, if not more so. And dark. This film is WAY DARK. The opening scene is disturbing in that a man kills his wife, which sets up a mysterious plot as we switch to Jack and Stephanie who are on their way to marriage counseling when a car accident causes them to make a detour into a "house", the eponymous and eerie place. The couples first meet the "hotel keepers" spooky grim Betty (Leslie Easterbrook ) and the weirdly repetitive "You're pretty" Pete. Easterbrook is incredible convincing in her darker-than-Nurse-Ratchet appeal. The only reprieve from this comes from another couple who arrived just beforehand and seem normal just like the first couple. One of the characters whispers, "They are looking at us like we're specimens in the glass", which pretty much sums up the off behavior of these two keepers. Screeching music and low dark humming bleeds into this isolated place as a third "keeper", Stuart, manifests seemingly like a ghost, but even more so when the "Tin Man", a masked stranger lurking outside demands a body before dawn. I think a more apt title would be "The Nightmare" because this film forces both couples to face their greatest fears--their dark disturbing pasts and because the hotel feels like hell on earth.

The quality of the film is low, the acting is pretty decent, and the special effects are sub-par, but the

very real sense of darkness, of evil and sin's consequence, is well played out, and without being preachy. This house is certainly not a place where anyone would want to stay even for a moment.

#House2008 #FrankPeretti #TedDekker