If the pay-off in the last 15 minutes of “The House of the Devil” was as strong as the build-up in the first 80, the movie could have been a horror classic.
Writer-director Ti West has taken the satanic cult hysteria of the 1980s and fashioned it into a very well-made mood piece about a Connecticut college girl (Jocelin Donahue) who lives to regret what looks like an easy “babysitting” job involving an elderly woman in a remote country house.
West clearly knows how to invest an everyday setting with creepy undertones and to keep an audience tense without resorting to cheap shock effects. The atmosphere of mounting dread is reminiscent of Roman Polanksi’s work in “Rosemary’s Baby” — we know something is off but we don’t really know the half of it.
It is refreshing to see a contemporary horror movie with so little violence in it that nevertheless manages to keep a viewer on edge for almost the entire running time.
West is not only good at atmosphere, he is also good with actors. Jocelin Donahue is very appealing as Samantha — she gets drawn into the horror plot so slowly that we never look at her as another of those slasher movie dopes who should know better. The financial underpinings of the story play a major part in the girl’s believability — she needs the $400 she is offered for one night’s work just as much as Marion Crane thought she needed that $40,000 she embezzled in “Psycho.”
West keeps the tension building as Samantha meets the odd son (Tom Noonan) and even odder daughter-in-law (Mary Woronov) of the old woman she is hired to watch. The house itself becomes a character with West investing it with non-cliche creepiness — there is nothing blatantly sinister about the place but it just doesn’t feel right.
“The House of the Devil” is being released on video Tuesday and is well worth a rental for the good performances and the above average craftsmanship (in this age of slapped-together horror schlock). But I wish it had a more satisfying conclusion.
