I'll preface this by saying that I enjoyed Bryan Bertino's debut, the Strangers, and I've now seen three of his four films (the Monster being the only one I haven't checked out). This movie is basically the Strangers all over again, but instead of a man and a woman being terrorized by masked strangers in a home invasion movie, it's a man and a woman being terrorized by the devil in a haunted house movie. You have the setting of a lone, isolated house. You have the complete lack of a cohesive plot. There's jump scares and other clichés. The cinematography and shot composition are identical, and you also have a similar bleak tone.
But the big difference is that the Strangers was a simple and effective home invasion movie, and it knew what it wanted to be. It wasn't a confusing, jumbled mess that brought forward a million questions and answered none of them. It's clear that Bryan Bertino isn't interested in storytelling or having a fleshed out plot. He wants to create a dense atmosphere and suspenseful set pieces. The only issue is that you can't make what is essentially the same movie again, using the same bag of tricks, and expect to invoke the same emotional response (except for the record player playing country music during a suspenseful scene, I dig that). And outside of that bag of tricks, there just isn't anything that this movie offers.
Sure, there's some subtext you can attempt to read into, about how the entity is maybe an allegory for people not being able to accept the loss of a loved one, and wanting to pin the blame on something supernatural and out of their hands. Or about how religion is an unreliable outlet to find comfort or answers about death. And while I like these themes, the problem is that they aren't actually explored in the movie, and they don't add anything of substance to it.
Plot-wise, the movie is just a mess. There are things introduced that you think are going to be important plot points, but they aren't. They're just random things that are never brought up again. The biggest offender, without spoiling what happens, is a scene where the main character talks to Xander Berkeley over the phone and he says something genuinely interesting, and you think it's leading to a twist, but it never comes up again. On the subject of characters, Xander Berkeley is completely wasted in this movie. He just shows up out of nowhere and he serves no purpose in the story, and then he goes away. There's also just no reason we're given to care about these characters. Things start happening immediately and nothing gets developed with them. The characters don't really do anything, and they don't learn anything. They just stumble around confused for the entire runtime, and then the movie just ends on a jump scare. No closure. No payoff. Was that intentional? Was that intended to be a message about the mysterious, inevitable nature of death? I don't know, it's more likely that I'm just putting in more effort than the movie did. And even if it was intended, it's still just incredibly unsatisfying and anticlimactic.
There are some things to like about it, and it's okay if you enjoyed it. I'm glad you did. But I can't believe some people are looking at this movie as if it's some kind of deep, profound art film. It's painfully textbook, and there's nothing innovative or exceptional about it. Not with the story, the cinematography/presentation, the structure, nothing. If you want a good, recent, "arthouse," horror movie, I'd recommend the new Suspiria, Midsommar, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Mandy, Climax, and the Lighthouse (as just a few). If you just want a good haunted house movie, His House is another one that came out this year and is better in every way. It's also free to watch on Netflix. There's also We Are Still Here, which is free on Prime Video. Just watch one of those instead.
tl;dr: + It looks fine; the cinematography isn't bad + The music creates some nice ambience at times + Decent atmosphere, I guess + One or two pretty good scenes
But the big difference is that the Strangers was a simple and effective home invasion movie, and it knew what it wanted to be. It wasn't a confusing, jumbled mess that brought forward a million questions and answered none of them. It's clear that Bryan Bertino isn't interested in storytelling or having a fleshed out plot. He wants to create a dense atmosphere and suspenseful set pieces. The only issue is that you can't make what is essentially the same movie again, using the same bag of tricks, and expect to invoke the same emotional response (except for the record player playing country music during a suspenseful scene, I dig that). And outside of that bag of tricks, there just isn't anything that this movie offers.
Sure, there's some subtext you can attempt to read into, about how the entity is maybe an allegory for people not being able to accept the loss of a loved one, and wanting to pin the blame on something supernatural and out of their hands. Or about how religion is an unreliable outlet to find comfort or answers about death. And while I like these themes, the problem is that they aren't actually explored in the movie, and they don't add anything of substance to it.
Plot-wise, the movie is just a mess. There are things introduced that you think are going to be important plot points, but they aren't. They're just random things that are never brought up again. The biggest offender, without spoiling what happens, is a scene where the main character talks to Xander Berkeley over the phone and he says something genuinely interesting, and you think it's leading to a twist, but it never comes up again. On the subject of characters, Xander Berkeley is completely wasted in this movie. He just shows up out of nowhere and he serves no purpose in the story, and then he goes away. There's also just no reason we're given to care about these characters. Things start happening immediately and nothing gets developed with them. The characters don't really do anything, and they don't learn anything. They just stumble around confused for the entire runtime, and then the movie just ends on a jump scare. No closure. No payoff. Was that intentional? Was that intended to be a message about the mysterious, inevitable nature of death? I don't know, it's more likely that I'm just putting in more effort than the movie did. And even if it was intended, it's still just incredibly unsatisfying and anticlimactic.
There are some things to like about it, and it's okay if you enjoyed it. I'm glad you did. But I can't believe some people are looking at this movie as if it's some kind of deep, profound art film. It's painfully textbook, and there's nothing innovative or exceptional about it. Not with the story, the cinematography/presentation, the structure, nothing. If you want a good, recent, "arthouse," horror movie, I'd recommend the new Suspiria, Midsommar, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Mandy, Climax, and the Lighthouse (as just a few). If you just want a good haunted house movie, His House is another one that came out this year and is better in every way. It's also free to watch on Netflix. There's also We Are Still Here, which is free on Prime Video. Just watch one of those instead.
tl;dr: + It looks fine; the cinematography isn't bad + The music creates some nice ambience at times + Decent atmosphere, I guess + One or two pretty good scenes
- Just the Strangers all over again, with nothing new to add
- Boring and formulaic
- Terrible plot
- Lots of jump scares and clichés
- Repetitive
- Characters we don't care about