The House of the Devil

January 3rd, 2009







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The House of the Devil

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Still of Greta Gerwig in The House of the DevilThe House of the DevilStill of Jocelin Donahue in The House of the DevilStill of AJ Bowen in The House of the DevilStill of Jocelin Donahue in The House of the DevilStill of Tom Noonan in The House of the Devil

Plot
In the 1980s, college student Samantha Hughes takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse. She slowly realizes her clients harbor a terrifying secret; they plan to use her in a satanic ritual.

Release Year: 2009

Rating: 6.5/10 (10,596 voted)

Critic's Score: 73/100

Director: Ti West

Stars: Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov

Storyline
In the 1980s, college student Samantha Hughes takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse. She slowly realizes her clients harbor a terrifying secret; they plan to use her in a satanic ritual.

Cast:
Jocelin Donahue - Samantha
Tom Noonan - Mr. Ulman
Mary Woronov - Mrs. Ulman
Greta Gerwig - Megan
AJ Bowen - Victor Ulman
Dee Wallace - Landlady
Heather Robb - Roommate
Darryl Nau - Random Guy
Brenda Cooney - Nurse
Danielle Noe - Mother
Mary B. McCann - Elaine Cross (as Mary McCann)
John Speredakos - Ted Stephen
Lena Dunham - 911 Operator (voice)
Graham Reznick - Local DJ (voice)
Ti West - Favorite Teacher

Taglines: Talk on the phone. Finish your homework. Watch T.V. DIE!



Details

Official Website: Official site | Official soundtrack site |

Release Date: 3 Jan 2009

Filming Locations: Connecticut, USA

Opening Weekend: £407 (UK) (21 March 2010) (1 Screen)

Gross: $100,659 (USA) (27 December 2009)



Technical Specs

Runtime:



Did You Know?

Trivia:
Shot over a period of only 18 days.

Goofs:
Factual errors: The TV newscaster claims that the eclipse of the moon will become total around midnight and "that's when you'll actually be able to see the moon itself disappear." However, due to the refracting effects of earth's atmosphere, the moon does not "disappear" at all during an eclipse, even when completely in the earth's shadow, but only becomes orange/red. (An actual image of the moon in full eclipse is in fact shown - in several, quick flashes - later in the film.)



User Review

Like a Lost Horror Classic from 1982

Rating:

If the producers of this film were smart, they would deny that Ti West wrote and directed this film and claim that it was a lost film of the early eighties that they found in a drawer at Paramount. Say a lost Tobe Hooper film that Tobe did right before doing Poltergeist. Something that Steven Spielberg bought to keep from competing with Poltergeist and shoved in a drawer somewhere.

Because it's that good. The House of the Devil feels like it should have been released back in 1982, from the feathered hair of the leads, to the Walkman, to the music and sound, to the slow build of the suspense, to the vintage titles. It is even a mash-up of the late seventies obsessions with baby-sitters in peril (When a Stranger Calls) and satanism in the suburbs (The Omen). Most importantly, it has all the slow-burn intensity of the great horror films of that period.

The baby-sitter in peril is Samantha (Jocelin Donahue). A college student, she is doing baby-sitting gigs because she needs money for a new apartment and desperately wants to get out of her dorm. Her roommate is a sex-addict and a slob and Samantha as a neat-freak germaphobe finds both behaviours repulsive. The job that Samantha ends up taking, on the night of a full lunar eclipse, is obviously (cue Admiral Ackbar) a trap, more obvious to the audience than to Samantha because we know that the name of the film is The House of the Devil, because her employer is Tom Noonan, the original Red Dragon from Michael Mann's Manhunter and because Samantha is too self-absorbed to notice that she is in danger.

There is a danger to read too much into it, but there is a very real sense that this film is pitched perfectly at the divide between the sex and drugs disco party lifestyle of the Seventies and the money-obsessed, self-absorbed Eighties.

There is even a sense in which the film (with the benefit of filmmaker hindsight) acts as a horror metaphor explaining how the drugs and sex excesses of the Seventies led to the health catastrophes of the Eighties, especially AIDS. Samantha may not know exactly why she is a germaphobe, nor why she is so freaked out by the house she is sitting at, but her anxieties are well-placed.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? -William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming





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