The House of the Devil

I don't think I have ever seen a haunted house movie the entire way through.  I haven't been avoiding the sub-genre, but that's just how things have worked out; I started to watch The Amityville Horror and the remake of The Haunting at different points, but I wound up not finishing them, for whatever reasons.  I thought I could break that trend with The House of the Devil, one of the better-reviewed, but still under the radar, horror movies of the past few years.  Heads up to haunted house movie fans: there is no haunted house here.  Whoops.  I looked at the cover art and made an assumption without reading up on the flick.  Even going in with completely inaccurate expectations, though, I thought this one was pretty good.

Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) has a pretty awful college roommate.  She is a slovenly sex fiend, and uses the old "sock on the doorknob" signal frequently and without regard for Samantha's needs.  Samantha needs a new place to live, and she finds one.  The only problem is that she needs to pay the first month's rent in advance, and she has about six dollars to her name.  What's a college girl to do?  If your answer was "strip," you probably should be right.

Samantha opts to look for jobs that would pay her to degrade herself in entirely different ways.  Specifically, she finds a flyer asking for a babysitter.  She calls the number and speaks to Mr. Ulman (Tom Noonan) and, while he seems awfully weird, she agrees to take the job.  Of course, Samantha doesn't have a car, so she persuades her buddy, Megan (Greta Gerwig) to drive her out to the remote and isolated home.  Once there, Mr. Ulman reveals that there is no child to be babysat; the job is instead to be on hand in case his elderly mother-in-law has a problem.  Ulman reasoned that he wasn't getting any bites with his ads for "elderly assistance," so he would fib a bit.  Right off the bat, Ulman seems odd and has lied.  Megan sees that as a sign to cut bait and run, but Samantha is persuaded to stay with the promise of $400 for the night.  So...a creepy liar promises to overpay you for an easy and simple job, and you don't think twice?  Huh.  Maybe I should have mentioned that there is a lunar eclipse that night that the Ulmans are eager to witness.  Okay, maybe something weird is going on, right?  Or perhaps I should have referenced the prologue, which states that, during the 80s, 70% of American adults believed in the existence of Satanic cults, while another 30% believed that evidence of the cults was covered up by the US government.  In that case, Samantha seems pretty screwed.

This is as reassuring as Noonan can look

One of the first things about The House of the Devil that you will notice is how much director Ti West wanted this to look and feel like an 80s movie.  The clothes, the hair, the neighborhood, the cassette Walkman all scream early eighties, but it goes deeper than that; West uses vintage 80s title fonts, freeze frames, and soundtracks to convey the era for this story.  West even goes so far as to include the overused horror movie claim that the film is based on true unexplained events; I've tried researching that claim, and I'm pretty sure he just threw it in to be vintage-y.  Even without those nice touches, I really liked Ti West's direction in The House of the Devil.  This isn't one of those horror movies where things jump out and startle you every few minutes; this is a slow-boiling suspenseful horror film.  You know something bad will happen, but it is revealed so subtly and so slowly that you begin to dread even the most inane things, like delivery pizza.  And with good reason.

Shades of things to come?

Granted, there is about an hour before anything definitely scary or spooky happens.  Until then, your enjoyment will depend on how engaged you are in the film.  I liked Samantha, I saw some creepy potential, and was absorbed as the story slowly unfolded.  If you haven't bought into the film early on, this first hour will positively drag and feel torturous.

While there weren't many actors, I enjoyed those I saw.  Jocelin Donahue started out as merely likeable (a tough enough task in any horror movie), but she proved to be a bit of a badass before the story ended.  Tom Noonan was uncomfortable when he tried to be normal, but his creepy moments were convincing.  Mary Woronov (of Death Race 2000 fame) was suitably awkward as Mrs. Ulman and Greta Gerwig was convincing as an 80s coed.  IMDb credits AJ Bowen as "Victor Ulman," although I don't recall him ever having a name in the film.  Anyway, he was kind of creepy, in a "who are you and what are you doing in this movie?" sort of way.  There is no overwhelming acting performance in this movie, but I liked that everyone was pretty understated, both as good guys and creepy Satanists. 

Understated

My main complaint with The House of the Devil is also something that I respect.  There is a significantly large chunk of the story left out of this movie.  We never learn who the young bearded man is.  We never learn exactly why these people are doing what they're doing.  Why did they need Samantha, but the other people we see are not worthy?  And what the hell is going on here?  Those questions bothered me a little, I admit, but I like the overall impression they create.  This isn't a movie where the bad guy will monologue his ludicrous plot; this is a horror movie that feels like something that could happen.  Well, maybe minus the weird priestess lady. 

Still, the actions of the Ulmans would have been absolutely out of left field if it wasn't for the mention of Satanic cults in the prologue.  Real life doesn't always have answers, but movies usually try to leave fewer gaping story holes than this film.

Admittedly, I went into this movie with a pretty inaccurate idea of what the film would be about.  I wasn't disappointed, though, and that speaks volumes to the accessibility of The House of the Devil.  It's a damned good homage to the classic pre-cheesy era of horror, and I thought the ending was pretty awesome.  There aren't many modern horror movies that build atmosphere and actually use suspense effectively, so this was a rather refreshing break from horror monotony for me.  This is the perfect movie to scare the crap out of people who hear noises when they are home alone, so recommend with caution.

Manhunter

Manhunter is at a bit of a disadvantage with modern viewers.  While it was the first Thomas Harris novel to reach the big screen, it does not feature Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Leckor (not Lecter, as in the later films).  This was remedied when the movie was remade taking the source novel's name of Red Dragon.  That remake was a star-studded spectacle, even though it was clearly just an excuse to get Hopkins into the Lecter role one more time.  Because of Hopkins' success with the Lecter role, this movie has been unfairly overlooked.  While it is dated, this movie stands on its own well enough.

Manhunter is the story of Will Graham (William Petersen), a former profiler for the FBI.  His former coworker, Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina), approaches Graham with a serial killer case; Graham wants nothing to do with the work, but Crawford convinces him that the case is a ticking clock (the killer operates on a lunar cycle, so they know how much time they have) and Graham unhappily submits.  Graham is unquestionably the focus in this movie and is on the screen for the better part of the first half.  He approaches criminal profiling like method actors approach their roles; he takes the facts and then tries to get in the killer's head.  With this insight, he is able to follow their logic and, theoretically, catch them.  This killer, dubbed the Tooth Fairy, is harder to predict than most.  Graham has difficulty finding connections between the victims, so he turns to a criminal for help.  Graham's last case was that of Dr. Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox), who was both a psychiatrist adviser to Graham and the serial killer that Graham was hunting; Graham discovered Lecktor's secret and led to his capture, but not before Lecktor nearly killed him.  Meanwhile, Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan) is the Tooth Fairy killer.  However, he manages to fall in love with a blind woman, Reba (Joan Allen), at work.  Her confidence and straightforward manner puts him at ease, since he is socially awkward and is self conscious of his repaired cleft lip.  Unfortunately, Dollarhyde is a psycho-killer and Graham is practically psychic, so this movie can't end well for everybody.

This is not a movie without its problems.  The production values definitely indicate that this was made in the eighties.  The title is just silly; the producers decided not to call it "Red Dragon" (partially) because it doesn't have any karate.  Toward the end of the movie, when Dollarhyde is reveling in his serial killer persona, he turns on Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Godda-Da-Vita" to frighten his girlfriend.  Unless she has a fear of organ music, he made a poor choice.  The movie's ending strays significantly away from the book's, which isn't necessarily a problem.  The ending is very physical, where the rest of the movie is psychological; the ending is abrupt because of this.

There are a lot of good things about this movie, though.  I liked William Petersen's performance; he seemed genuinely disturbed as he figured out what and why the Tooth Fairy did his work.  Some of his lines seemed a little unnatural, but I think that suits a character that can put himself in the mental shoes of killers.  Brian Cox does a decent job as Hannibal Lecktor, but he made the character seem more human; making him more approachable and understandable, though, makes his aloofness seem pettier.  My overall impression was that Hannibal was a fairly intelligent, snotty jerk --- not necessarily a monster.  Tom Noonan, on the other hand, was very effective as the Tooth Fairy.  Maybe it's because this movie does not give nearly as much background to his character as Red Dragon does, but he is socially awkward, abrupt, unsympathetic, and genuinely creepy.  Unfortunately, when he assumes his killer persona, he wears what appears to be pantyhose over half of his head.  While a little weird, it's also a little funny.  The other actors (basically Dennis Farina, Joan Allen, and Stephen Lang) play their parts well enough.

Michael Mann directed and wrote the screenplay to this film.  That means that this movie is a little long, has abrupt violence, and a gratuitous sex scene.  I think he did a pretty good job with the actors in this movie; Cox and Petersen do pretty well and Noonan (who is not a good actor) was impressive.  This movie is a lot less graphic than both the book and the remake, which I liked better than having Graham flash back to murders that he is imagining.  I disagree with the choice to omit all references to the Red Dragon from this movie; a lot of Dollarhyde's dialogue is based off of the ideas of William Blake, and ignoring the painting, tattoos and everything else made his dialogue more nonsensical.  I really didn't like much of Graham's monologuing, but it got absolutely terrible toward the film's climax.

In the end, the odd creative choices led to an ending that didn't match the tone of the film as a whole.  I liked several aspects of the movie, but it was occasionally awkward to watch.