House at the End of the StreetJennifer Lawrence was so amazingly good in Winter's Bone that any other performance I've seen of hers leaves me a little flat. In this film her face is so chipmunkishly round and so numbingly plain I don't think she'll ever be able to have the range of expression to deliver on the promise she showed in Bone. Her face is actually a distraction to me it's so weird looking.
In House he's paired with Elisabeth Shue, who I've always wanted to have as my personal babysitter, in a semi-formulaic "family moves to creepy neighborhood and strange things ensue" allegedly horror/suspense film.
Got one of the worst ratings of the year by Rotten Tomatoes, but that might be a little harsh.
The movie experience was marred by a bama assclown a row above who was trying (and failing) to prove just how clever and cool he was to his girlfriend by narrating the entire movie with such insightful comments as:
"Oh hell, this shit is ON now..."
"Dat dumb bitch gonna go in the house"
"Oh yeah, boyeeeee, he's fucked."
One or two would have been okay, but he kept it up from the first trailer to the last scene, stopping only when a theater employee would come and stand at the end of his aisle. Ignorant motherfucker.
The movie wasn't really horror, wasn't truly suspense because it meandered too much, wasn't really a good family drama because it tossed out extraneous plot threads that went nowhere. Her dad was in a band? Relevant to the story? She joined a band? Were any of the characters in that plot deviation relevant? Apparently. No. Yes. No.
Wasn't a really a bad movie. Wasn't a good movie. It was just sort of "there." By the time it got to the reveals, it had wandered around aimlessly for so long you'd lost the ability to care enough to be shocked/surprised or whatever.
There are worse ways to spend an hour and a half than looking at Shue and wondering if Lawrence will ever live up to her potential, though.