House
House, the Christian horror flick opening this week (based on a novel by Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti), is a perfect example of why mainstream media fans don’t like Christian entertainment. I didn’t want to get off on a rant about Christian entertainment (or why we even need to differentiate types of entertainment based on religion) and I even gave myself a stern talking to before watching the film. I reminded myself that I wanted to watch and write about House based solely on its merits as a horror film. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to do that because House wears its religion on its sleeve-and like the pushiest Jehovah’s Witnesses, it’s going to try and convert you to its cause come hell or high water. It’s not so much a film as a brochure to take up the Evangelical lifestyle, because as the film likes to remind us, the wages of sin is death.
Watching the film is sort of like spending an hour and a half in one of those Hell Houses the local churches trot out every Halloween. If you’ve never been (or aren’t familiar with the concept), the Hell House is like your typical Halloween haunted house-only instead of going in and getting spooked by guys dressed up like Jason or Freddy, Hell Houses love to “scare” you with images of people being dragged to Hell and tormented by demons for all of eternity because they were gay, committed suicide, or used drugs (there’s actually a documentary about these things entitled Hell House-you can rent it or watch it instantly through NetFlix. It’s worth checking out). House does the same thing-never trying to scare you with anything actually horrific, but instead more interested in not so subtly reminding us we’re all going to Hell if we don’t get right with God.
In House‘s defense, it doesn’t start the sermon right away. For the first forty minutes or so, I thought I was going to be able to keep my promise. House starts out like a normal (albeit incredibly generic) horror flick. Jack (Reynaldo Rosales) and Stephanie (Heidi Dippold) are off to a meeting with their marriage counselor. Neither is happy. They get lost on the backroads, but get directions from the local sheriff (Michael Madsen). Unluckily for them, his route puts them on an even more off the beaten track path and they wind up stranded. They wander to a nearby bed and breakfast where they meet two other stranded travelers, Randy (J.P. Davis) and Leslie (Julie Ann Emery) as well as the odd family who runs the joint (including Bill Moseley and Leslie Easterbrook-who were clearly brought in to give the film some mainstream genre credibility). I’m sure you can guess where this is all going…
To make a long story short, Moseley and Easterbrook (and their son-who reminded me of Peter Bark’s character in Andrea Bianchi’s Burial Ground for some strange reason) are crazy! Even crazier is the psycho dude outside the house, a guy named Tin Man, who sends in a charming missive stating he killed God for coming into his house, he kills anyone who comes into his house, but if the people in his house kill one person before sunrise, he’ll let that second part slide.
Once this happens, the film kicks into high gear (which is about second gear-there’s not really all that much happening in this one, kids) and each of the four main characters must endure the sins of their past while trying to escape the hot fingers of Satan. This is where the film goes into hyper-preachy mode, all but bludgeoning us with the message that light conquers the darkness (going so far as to include a young girl character discovered around the midway point who mentions this to other characters on several occasions…) before getting to an ending that’s so awful, so predictable, and so philosophically at odds with the film’s message (well, at least the final shot is on that last part) that I wanted to shoot myself in the face for even watching this thing. I understand that slasher films were hardly subtle in presenting the whole “sex + drugs = death” equation, but they appear downright vague when placed next to House.
If the preaching weren’t enough to turn off mainstream viewers (and it will be) then the fact that this film trots out just about every damn horror cliché in the universe ought to do the trick. In the first ten or so minutes alone we’re treated to a jump scare (I have to give them some credit here-this is the first time I’ve ever seen the “chicken through a window” moment as opposed to the ubiquitous cat…), a loss of cell phone reception, a weird cop, crap in the road that incapacitates a car, and a character saying (obviously) “there’s something off about these people”-and no one else admitting to feeling the same way. These things are nothing, however, compared to the ending of House. Here at Casa de Bracken we always joke about the “it was all a dream” or the “and the man and woman who were left on this planet were named Adam and Eve” ending as examples of terrible ways to close any film or book. The ending of House is equally obvious and just as hackneyed. I really want to spoil it, but I won’t…
I will say that if this were a mainstream film (and if the novel ended this way the same thing applies) no one would have let it fly as is. This is part of the reason why people don’t seem to enjoy religious based entertainment. It’s like if you slap “this is church approved” on something, religious folk will rush out to see it even if it insults their intelligence in the process (which seems to be how we wound up with George W. for eight years. Hell, if I’m going to piss off the Christians in this review, I might as well rile up the Republicans too…). I hate to denigrate an entire group of artists (because I know there are exceptions), but it often feels like these guys who make a living in this particular field are the C Team of writers, musicians, and filmmakers. They couldn’t hack it out in the secular world, so they’ll take this fame instead. That’s an awful thing to say and I feel bad saying it, but House does nothing to disprove the notion. If Dekker and Peretti are the Stephen King of Christian horror fiction, and this is the best they’ve got, it proves my point for me.
I guess, in some weird way, House coming out in the week where we finally break free of eight years of Bush/Cheney (and the inherent fear mongering that regime loved to employ to get us to do what they wanted) is almost fitting. I’m not saying a Presidential change will make everything better or that the mainstream horror films coming out in the wake of House will somehow be a vast improvement-but given what the new president and the rest of this year’s horror crop is up against in comparison, it would be hard to do worse.
Horror Geek Rating: 1 out of 5
Tags: Bill Moseley, Film Reviews, Frank Peretti, House, Leslie Easterbrook, Michael Madsen, Ted Dekker
November 9th, 2008 at 7:03 am
I also had some hope for this one, wanting to be high-minded and open to another philosophy, but it sounds like this movie just treads trodden trails in terms of its didactic nature. Too bad… I think a movie like The Exorcism of Emily Rose does a better than average job of showing a religious point of view without being too heavy handed. Although I didn’t really care for that movie either. Great review!
November 9th, 2008 at 7:28 am
Yeah, it’s very heavy-handed plus it has all these other little problems that make it almost impossible to sit through.
I wasn’t a big fan of Emily Rose either, but it’s the far better film of these two.
November 10th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Great Review Mike!
Sorry to hear that this movie turned out the way that it did.
The book was decent (definitely not the best by Dekker or Peretti)
I am a Christian [who loves horror - odd I know]. and there are some excellent works of Christian fiction that would make really good movies, but like you said – for some reason this just can’t seem to get done correctly.
I don’t know. . .
November 10th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
I haven’t read anything by Dekker or Peretti–but I’d like to at least give them a shot. Is there something specific you’d recommend? Or any Christian horror for that matter?
I think the problem with the “Christian” version of these sort of things is that they invariably put the religious agenda ahead of the entertainment value. If they’d just reverse the equation, it would probably work a lot better.
November 11th, 2008 at 7:44 am
Mike – I have read several Christian fiction books, and generally speaking, no matter the genre – horror, mystery, historical – they are NEVER as good as mainstream writing. My opinion, they are written for a specific market of people who have never or rarely read mainstream fiction. And Dekker seems to get worse with each book, so much so in that “House” was the last Dekker book I picked up. But, I have hope that overall, Christian fiction will begin to improve over time. Back in the 80′s and early 90′s, Christian music was so second-rate to mainstream music. It was the “blatant message first” approach that kept the mainstream public away in droves. Nowadays, you can listen to Christian artists on mainstream stations, because the talent in the genre is on an even par, and because the artists are savvy enough to realize that you don’t have to poke somebody’s eye out with a stick to get their attention. So, my advice to you is to wait about, oh another 10 -12 years, THEN go out and pick up some Christian fiction. Maybe by then, they will have wizened up!
November 11th, 2008 at 8:09 am
Thanks Steve, I’ll definitely keep that in mind.
The music analogy point is interesting, because I thought that was what was happening, but I’m not familiar enough with the topic to be sure. Hopefully the book and film people will emulate what the music folks have done then.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Steve’s analogy is dead on!
(and like you said Mike – I do not see why there needs to be a differentiation in the first place!)
I would say that Dekker is probably the best Fiction author that the Christian market has to offer right now (though come to think of it, I do not think I have read one of his books, since House either)
If you want to give one of his books a try, I suggest Three – actually it’s supposed to be Th3re
July 30th, 2009 at 12:03 am
My husband got this from Netflix and we just watched it.
As is my habit, I got online afterwards to read reviews.
I had no idea this was a Christian movie (and I am a Christian). If they were beating me over the head with some sort of message, it wasn’t apparent to me. It was just like all other horror movies, “message”-wise.