In "The House of the Devil," a young co-ed (Jocelin Donahue), hard-up for money to pay the rent on her new place off campus, answers an ad for a babysitting job way out in the boonies, only to be plunged headlong into a bizarre devil-worshipping cult in search of a sacrificial victim.
Set in the 1980s - in a time before cell phones gave us at least the illusion of connectedness and security - this refreshingly unadorned and unembellished thriller does something rather unique with its structure (possibly a necessity brought on by its extremely low budget). The story comes to such a slow boil that the stretched-out tension becomes almost unbearable, thereby enhancing the atmosphere of dread.
Unfortunately, die-hard slasher movie fans may be disappointed by the rather rushed, truncated and anticlimactic nature of the final scenes, in which our heroine finds herself being held captive by some of the most feckless and least competent kidnappers in horror movie history.
Still, the suspenseful buildup is more than compensation for the half-baked and halfhearted resolution that follows.
Set in the 1980s - in a time before cell phones gave us at least the illusion of connectedness and security - this refreshingly unadorned and unembellished thriller does something rather unique with its structure (possibly a necessity brought on by its extremely low budget). The story comes to such a slow boil that the stretched-out tension becomes almost unbearable, thereby enhancing the atmosphere of dread.
Unfortunately, die-hard slasher movie fans may be disappointed by the rather rushed, truncated and anticlimactic nature of the final scenes, in which our heroine finds herself being held captive by some of the most feckless and least competent kidnappers in horror movie history.
Still, the suspenseful buildup is more than compensation for the half-baked and halfhearted resolution that follows.