House of the Witch (2017)
I am a newly made horror fan, so I’ve been slowly watching some of the movies on Netflix and came across this one. Okay, I am going to be brutally honest here. If you are looking for a scary film to watch, this is not it. If you are looking for a good movie to watch, this is not it. However, if you are looking for an interesting movie to watch, this kind of works. The premise is fine; a bunch of college-aged teens get trapped in a house haunted by a witch together.
The rest of this post contains spoilers.
This type of film could have been pulled off much better. Most ‘bottle-episode’ horror movies focus on character development or character studies on how each person reacts differently to being in the situation based on their past. This film did a unique thing where they didn’t do or have any of that. Instead you have an hour and a half of just non-scary jump scares and unrealistic gory imagery.
Typically in B-horror films, the main issue is the actors poor skills. I actually think that in this movie, they are the best thing about it. You don’t root for everybody at first, namely Taylor (Arden Belle) and Brody (Jesse Pepe). Both die early on but by the time Taylor dies you do feel bad for her. She is let out of the house by the witch, only to be drowned in the bog outside. The audience never learns anything more about her. Same with Brody. If the film never said their names, no one would notice.
Honestly, you only really notice two names; Lana (Emily Bader) and Rachel (Michelle Randolph). Both the audience only notices because Shane (Darren Mann) shouts their names every other scene. I didn’t even know his name until I looked it up for this post. You learn the most about Lana and Shane, leading me to believe that if there were ‘final girls’ in this movie, it would have been them. None of the dialogue really reveals anything about anyone else. Mann takes on the character that is competent and able to move them throughout the house while everyone else is crying/freaking out.
The last five minutes of the movie are probably the best. However, instead of just hearing how each of the group members figured out she was taking parts of them to rebuild her body, it would have been more bone chilling to watch it after the reveal. I’m just glad no one survived.
