Whether it’s a desperate attempt to make money or simply a shortage of good or innovative ideas, the horror movie genre has suffered massively over the past few years. Pointless and absurd movies with no identifiable rhyme or reason have been–and continue to be–released to a stupidly hopeful audience.
Unfortunately, new movie, “House at the End of the Street” is no exception to this. Released on September 21st, this sub-par, PG-13 excuse for a horror movie is no doubt a waste of time and money. The overflowing bin of horror-movie disasters is going to have to make room for one more failure.
The movie started out with a super creepy and ominous opening, and introduced a somewhat cliched story-line of, girl-meets-boy-who-lives-next-door combined with the overused daughter-murders-parents-and-boy-moves-into-house-after-the-fact-plot. Needless to say, it all went downhill from there. The script was corny and full of mushy teenage angst and drama, and the focus seemed to be more on the budding romance between main characters Ryan and Elissa, rather than Ryan and the mystery of his sister Carrie-Ann, who fell off of a swing and sustained major brain damage (which led to the murder of her parents). As the movie progressed, vague scenes made the story confusing and impossible to follow.
First, Carrie-Ann drowned after running off into the woods subsequent to murdering her parents. Then, Carrie-Ann is alive, and Ryan has her locked in the basement of his parents house after the murders in order to protect her and look after her. Even after it is revealed in the last scenes of the movie that Ryan has been kidnapping women and sedating them, treating them as if they are Carrie-Ann, things still don’t make sense, and it’s not until the very last scenes that Carrie actually died when she fell off that swing, and Ryan’s parents made him become his sister. Instead of providing the audience with an interesting twist, this abrupt revelation is confusing and out-of-place with the rest of the film, and serves only as a sorry excuse for an ending.
Despite a weak and cliched plot, and a less-than-mediocre script, “House at the End of the Street” was a good movie as far as cinematography. The shots were interesting and well-composed, and the effects and filters that were used in certain scenes worked well with the tone and the mood. These were the only things that saved the movie, helping set up an effective tone. Other than that, however, the movie was a disgrace. Needless to say, Jennifer Lawrence’s performance was alright at best; a disappointing follow-up to her role as Katniss Everdeen in the hit film “The Hunger Games,” to say the least. In a quest to appeal to the fringe, Lawrence now has a horror-movie-mishap to add to her stark white resume. Guess that was a big “oops” on her part.
Overall, the movie was an immediate flop, just like every other recent horror-movie besides “Paranormal Activity.” This film is simply a redundant reiteration of what we already know; true, innovative horror is getting harder and harder to come by these days with directors focusing on investing in films that will make the most money in the least amount of time, and forgetting that quality should not be sacrifice for the sake of the almighty dollar. But seeing as how no one listens to horror-fans and good movie-lovers anymore, all anyone can do is sit and wait for the next big thing to erupt in our faces.
