Here is my third installment into the FinalGirl Film Club. You write a review, link to her review, and she links back. Do it!
I’m writing this with the assumption that you have already seen ‘The House of the Devil.’ So, beware of the crapload of spoilers!
I was very interested in ‘The House of the Devil’ from the beginning. Usually I gorge anything I can find on a film Im interested in, spoiling any fun or surprises when I actually see it. For ‘The House of the Devil,’ I avoided anything and everything. There was a ton of internet buzz, which is very hard to avoid when every blog you read is talking about it, but I did it and I’m glad I did. I went into the flick only knowing Ti West made it and it was about devil worshipers. The way I went about seeing the movie was different too. The movie was offered up via On Demand the entire month of October, so instead of going to the theater to battle with loud teeny boppers, I had a couple of close buddies come over to the house to enjoy the movie in a dark and intimate atmosphere. This was just as fun, if not more fun, than going to the theater. It felt like we were 10 years old and rented a crappy vhs copy to watch after our parents went to bed.
Tension
When piecing together a film, you want to be in charge of your audience. You want to control how they are feeling, which is why filmmaking is such a powerful medium. As a director, Ti understands and executes the story in such a way that doesn’t exist in modern cinema. So put aside your youtube attention span. Ignore your Saw music video style editing, and lets all appreciate actual filmmaking. The atmosphere of the film is dark and creepy, although it doesn’t start off that way. The first chunk of the film, we are in a brightly lit sunny college campus. We feel safe, and the main character Samantha feels safe, even though she hates her dirtbag roommate. Yet, as we move along the story and we know bad things are upon us, light sinks into dark. Almost like a tunnel, we are being sucked down into the blackness and there is nothing good on the other side. Take a look at how the progression happens. From light to dark. From safety to danger.
Another device used in the lighting was the use of shadow. As Samantha gets deeper and deeper into the house, the shadows get weirder and crazier. The use of silhouettes and bizarre angles adds to the oddness of the house. You know something isn’t right, and it’s just getting worse.
Contrast
Our brains recognize the safety of light, and the danger of darkness, and feel as if Samantha is walking right into something sinister as she enters that house. I covered some of this in a previous post I wrote about the use of contrast in horror films. Go take a look and see if it helps to make more sense of this. The use of contrast in the story is very apparent. For almost an hour, we are waiting for something to happen. Samantha looks for an apartment. She eats a candy bar. She turns in a paper. She responds to a babysitter ad. She eats pizza with her friend Megan. This is all great, but nothing scary is happening. The piano music is very gentle, the camera moves in slow zooms or pans, all of the dialogue is almost whispered. But I was on the edge of my seat, because I just knew something was going to happen. I didn’t know where or when or how, but I just knew, this girl was gonna get it and get it bad! And boy oh boy, does she ever.
Out of nowhere, all of this crazy shit happens. Intense music, shaky handheld camera, screams, blood, demons, craziness. Ti flipped the entire movie on its ear, and the shock made quite an impression on me.
Not only that, the biggest surprise came at about the middle point of the movie. The slow moving dialogue led into this scene of Sam’s friend Megan getting her face blown off. I never speak out loud when watching a movie, but I’m pretty sure I said, “Holy fucking shit!” Again, the contrast here had a lot to do with it. Slow dialogue vs. totally insane gunshot to the face out of nowhere.
Music
I absolutely love the music in the film. Not only do we have 80’s retro style electronic music by Mike Armstrong, we have beautiful piano and orchestration by Jeff Grace. Ti West sites Roman Polanski’s films as an influence on the style of this movie, and the creepy tinkling piano bed laid throughout really stuck out as such. Jeff’s score could have replaced the entire score of The Tenant, or vice versa. Bull’s-eye from Jeff.
Care and Consideration
Someone should give Art Director Chris Trujillo and Production Designer Jade Healy a gigantic hug for getting it right. I grew up in the 80’s, and what I remember most from that time, in terms of look and feel, is the color brown. My parents kitchen had dark brown cabinets and tile. We had brown wood paneling on most of our walls. I don’t know why, but when I saw how everything in the flick had a brown look to it, I thought, wow, that’s exactly what the 80’s looked like. Look at all of this brown!!
What I like is that the period isn’t crammed down your throat. We aren’t watching ‘The Wedding Singer’ here. The time and place just felt right, and the amount of care that went into making it so subtle gets my seal of approval. For example, look at this Coke cup. Remember these? Where the hell did they get 25 year old Coke cups?! Fantastic!
And check out that walkman. Great!
And Samantha’s costume, most notably her pants. And the robotic answering machine. And the fact that people used to use pay phones and answering machines at all. Everything here had generous amounts of care and consideration taken to get it right. Again, a bulls-eye from the Art Director and Production Designer.
In any interviews I read with Ti describing his influences for the film, he always cited Roman Polanski’s apartment trilogy of Repulsion, The Tenant, and Rosemary’s Baby, as well as The Changeling directed by Peter Medak. If you like ‘The House of the Devil’ and haven’t seen these films, do yourself a favor and check them out. Or vice-versa. Ti took from those films what I hope more young filmmakers would do, anchoring your movie with the story, character development, timing and pacing, and actual care and attention to detail. Watch this movie ten more times. It’s great.
