Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Tweetienator A nice little flick with great care for detail (brings back the 80s in music and "style" like) and good acting (Jocelin Donahue playing Samantha remembers me a little of Jessica Harper playing Suzy Bannion, the heroine of the classic Suspiria). The transition to the gory end and the resolution are a little blunt and not well paced for my taste and well, I was never really scared, surprised or shocked or anything like that. But anyway, not a bad flick but certainly no must-watch or must-collect for the lover of the art of horrors.

kamilarincon Using 16mm film, Ti West creates a movie that shoots us back to the 80's and reminds us of the slasher films of that time. The retro look is captured through West's way of zooming in on characters and inanimate objects, a style more typical in the 80's that would now be shot on a dolly. The topic of satanism is also something that many were introduced to in the 80s. However, what I most enjoyed about this film was the unique suspense created through a seemingly real-life scenario. We cared for the main character Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) and understood her struggle of being a broke college student and needing to make money fast. She has a roommate who is the typical "bad girl" while Samantha is the "good girl." Ironically enough, Samantha is the one that leads them to their misfortune. The bad signs start (literally) when she sees a babysitter-wanted flyer hanging on a bulletin board at school. The villains are then all introduced by being talked about first, but never actually seen. This style of having an unseen entity also makes one reminisce of iconic films such as Psycho. Once the villains in The House of Devil are introduced there is even bottom lighting that casts shadow so you can't really identify them at first and feel a sense of disconnect. West is able to create an underlying feeling of suspense from beginning to end. His use of long-shots specifically made it feel like anything could pop out of anywhere, at any time. The long-shots at time also made it feel like Samantha was being watched, but this was even more accomplished through West's use of fragmentation of the body. In some parts the characters weren't completely in frame as though the audience was hiding behind something watching them. In the end, even the characters of The House of the Devil knew they were getting into something they shouldn't. But, Samantha's pride makes her think it's all worth it until the very end where we are shocked and traumatized by the gore and the jarring editing they couldn't show us back in the 80s.

gabriellevasilevsk House of the Devil is a love letter to classic 80s horror films that timidly hides among modern horror films. This film managed to capture the true essence of the 80s: the nostalgic hits, the grainy camera, and the prominent fashion marked by big hair and high-waist pants. However, House of the Devil really shines through its purposeful callbacks to 80s horror elements. Unlike modern horror films, this film does not spoil or desensitize the viewer to a marathon of gore and nudity right off the get-go. Instead, this film takes its time by building up the horror and suspense through elements of mis-en-scene such as the lightning, sound, and the reoccurring colors of white and red leaving the viewer submissive and vulnerable to the plot by sitting on the edge of their seat thinking, "when will this go bad?". Director Ti West manipulates our emotions with the sound as it creates an illusion for the viewer that a jump scare will happen soon, only to find out it was a false alarm. Ti West allows the audience to soak up the mis-en-scene in this film by placing the camera in a seemingly casual spot as if we are to watch something horrific unravel behind the curtains, or behind the couch that Sam is sitting on, yet we are actually examining the house and the environment, searching for clues just as Sam is doing herself. The reoccurring colors of white and red are evident through the placement of white and red lamps, as they are foreshadowing the splashing use of those colors later on. Low-key lighting is used to cast a shadow of the stair railings on Sam's face to indicate that she is trapped, also foreshadowing events to come. Ti West explicitly incorporates these techniques that may be familiar to 80s horror fans, as this film shares intertextuality with Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre and John Carpenter's Halloween as both films also utilized sound and lighting techniques to frighten its audience.

sxyfun_chck I usually like low budget, independent films,but the only good thing about this movie was the awesome 80's music and the 80's vibe I got from it. I actually found myself forgetting that it wasn't made in the 80's. But that might be because the acting was about what you'd expect from an 80's flick. This is not a good thing. This is not a good film.The premise sounds good, but in reality, it felt empty, amateurish, and quite frankly, just fell flat. With no back story, or any kind of intro to lead us into the whole satanic sacrifice thing, it just came off as a project whipped up at the last minute by a failing film student. And a lazy one at that.It was too slow paced with too many drawn out mundane scenes which didn't work for the plot. Speaking of plots, the ending had a plot hole bigger than the hole in Megan's face