The House of the Devil

This film is a throwback to 80’s horrors in almost all the best ways. Sam (Jocelin Donahue) is a Sophomore collage girl desperate for money. She needs this money for a deposit on an apartment and agrees to babysit for a sinister couple called the Ulmans at their remote mansion on the portentous night of a lunar eclipse.

Her friend Megan (Greta Gerwig) drops her off and after discovering that instead of a baby there is an old woman upstairs. Megan tries to convince her friend to leave immediately but Mr Ulman (Tom Noonan) agrees to pay her $400 for a few hours work. Sam convinces her reluctant friend to return for her later and settles down for the evening.

Set in the 80’s, this is a film built on old-fashioned suspense rather than out and out gore and succeeds very well (mostly) on this part. However, it does sag a bit in the middle. I found my mind drifting quite a bit with the lack of anything happening after a while, which drained the tension away that was cleverly built up in the early part of the film. It seemed to me that Ti West had a solid start and a reasonably good ending but was unsure what to do with a large part of the bit inbetween. The tension builds rapidly towards the end again however, and the acting is both natural and uncomplicated.

It absolutely captures the 80’s feel in both its look and film style, which makes it an endearingly refreshing change. This is a good low budget movie, but the lull in the middle stops it from being a truly great low budget movie. Well worth watching in the wee hours with the lights out.