HOUSE
Watching HOUSE was a bit frustrating. It has a good setup: William Katt is a dispirited writer who moves into his aunt’s house, only to discover it’s haunted. Or besieged by monsters. Or by his own personal demons. Or a gateway to Narnia’s most evil subdivision. Also, his son went missing there a few months earlier. And Katt’s character grew up there himself. And no one till now realized it was so fucking weird or a nexus to other realities.
The movie’s big problem is it wants to be everything at once with no answers or accountability in direction. Katt is writing a book about his PTSD caused by his service in Vietnam, but he doesn’t seem particularly phased his son went missing in the childhood home he’s now residing in. They counterbalance that by showing he may be unbalanced (his neighbor calls the cops when he believes Katt is attempting suicide), but the tone is so comedic, broad and slapstick that it fails to be a serious consideration.
There’s no explanation whatsoever why the house is like this. As a writer (a horror writer at that) you’d think Katt would question when Aunt Petunia’s home became a doorway to Hell. You’d think he’d find some kind of book of witchcraft or secret room with occult paraphernalia, or at least have some kind of flashback that says “Jesus, I thought it was my imagination when I was ten and saw the rubbery monster under my bed”. But nope; nothing: the only home you’ve ever known is now haunted, keep the horror gags moving.
There were parts I liked. I liked how Katt’s first instinct when witnessing a closet Boogeyman is to don some military gear, set up a dozen cameras for proof and prep an escape route. I loved the creepy and articulated Berni Wrightson-esque design of Richard Moll’s undead soldier. And I really liked one scene where he invites his neighbor over to watch a midnight movie, only to tell him they’re really going to elaborately trap a very large raccoon (read, a monster) that’s trapped in the closet using a harpoon gun, a fire poker, and a mattress to shield them.
If HOUSE would have jettisoned more of its unneeded serious aspects and focussed a little more on the origins of the home’s threat, it could’ve been a horror/comedy classic up there with EVIL DEAD.
