I think what i liked was the lack of explanation to the audience (part of what the Fangoria blogger incorrectly termed lack of substance) about the happenings, including the occultic finale. It was a straightforward unfloding of events without the usual mumbo jumbo and explanations. Life is that way. Rarely do we get a complete story or closure when catastrophic events happen . I did feel the ending was a tad abrupt and a few more minutes could have given the film more heft.
When I said "lack of substance," I didn't mean "lack of explanation" or "lack of" anything else. If I did, I would have said so.
It took nearly half an hour to get her alone in the house, then she wanders around the house for over half an hour before anything happens. When shit finally starts happening...
SPOILER ALERT!
... we get a brief Satanic ritual and a chase scene before she blows her fuckin' brains out - on camera! In the next scene, she's in a hospital bed with her head bandaged. If this happened in a Rob Zombie or Eli Roth film, people would be pitching a fit about how this was a cheat & doesn't make any sense. On top of that, there's no reason why would she think to kill herself instead of the Satanist chasing her through the cemetery.END SPOILER
I don't know if people have seen other cuts of the film where this happens off camera, but the HDNet cut clearly showed it on camera (I read an interview where Ti West complained that the studio cut 4 minutes of her wandering around from one cut of the film, including the scene where she was playing the piano, which was in the HDNet cut -
http://is.gd/4OJMm).
There's simply nothing more to the film. I'm glad that people who are nostalgic for films from that era enjoyed it as a guilty pleasure, but after reading the same cliches over and over about how this film is for intelligent, mature people who don't have an attention deficiency - or ever worse, that bullshit "true horror fans" cop-out - I had to write something.
If mature people are scared THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, creaky houses and their own shadows, I'd rather be immature. If intelligent people prefer films where people wander around and nothing happens over films where things actually happen, I'd rather be blissfully ignorant focusing what little attention I have on films where I'm not fighting falling asleep.
If films like THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL & PARANORMAL ACTIVITY are for "true horror fans," I'd rather be a film fan who enjoys horror films that embrace this visual medium. If I want to hear sound effects that allude to things that might or might not be happening while people wander around, there are plenty of old-time radio plays available online.
To be fair, I had to laugh at the comment someone left on my blog about "Samantha's isolation". Kubrick's THE SHINING was a psychological exploration of isolation. THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL was about a teenager's exploration of a house where she wasn't even left alone.
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Last Edit: November 06, 2009, 06:05:38 AM by Hellstorm »
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