House at the End of the Street

 

The good news about House at the End of the Street is that it's coming out early enough in Jennifer Lawrence's rising career that it shouldn't effect it much.  Her career will move on, and hopefully she'll move onto smarter material after the Hunger Games franchise is over.  Still, when all is said and done, she probably should have passed on this all together.  While not the worst teen horror film I've seen, this is a dull and schlocky rip off of Psycho that fails to impress on just about every level.

Lawrence plays Elissa, a high school girl who seems indifferent to just about anything and everyone around her.  I'm not sure if that's the way the character was written in the script, but it's how the young actress has chosen to play her.  It's a one-note performance, with Lawrence pretty much using the same semi-blank expression no matter what may be happening to her.  As the film opens, Elissa and her mom Sarah (Elizabeth Shue) have moved from Chicago to a small rural town.  There's tension between mother and daughter, due to Sarah's past with substance abuse.  Now mom wants a new start on life, and has taken a job at a local hospital, hoping it will lead to better things.  They move into a home that's somewhat isolated and surrounded by a dark wooded area, which will provide suitable tension when the horror elements come into play later in the film.  In fact, Sarah tells Elissa up front that the only reason why they can afford to live in the new house is because of a double murder that happened in the house next door to them.

The house next door is supposed to be abandoned, but late one night, Sarah hears a car pull up to it, and a light goes on from within.  She starts asking the locals what happened in that house and who lives there, and gets all the details.  Turns out four years ago, a young girl named Carrie Anne (Eva Link) murdered her parents late one night, and then disappeared into the surrounding woods, where it's believed she eventually died.  Now, the murdered couple's surviving son, Ryan (Max Thieriot), lives alone in the house, and is generally treated as an outcast by the entire neighborhood.  Elissa eventually meets the mysterious Ryan, and finds him to be kind, sympathetic, artistic, and misunderstood.  Of course, she doesn't get to see what we do when as soon as Ryan is alone, he makes his way to a secret locked room in his basement, where he keeps a young woman, which is apparently his thought to be dead sister, hidden away and sedated with drug injections.

It's hard to talk about this movie without diving headfirst into spoiler territory.  The movie aims to be a psychological thriller that keeps us guessing right up until the end about Ryan's true motivations, and whether or not the woman he keeps in his basement actually is his murderous sister.  Said girl has a nasty habit of getting out of that hidden room, with Ryan having to chase her down and sedate her again.  Is he trying to protect Elissa from his sister, or does he have other motives?  Once again, the movie is a bit unclear until the third act when everything is revealed.  I can see this idea working successfully as a thriller, but House at the End of the Street is all wrong in its pacing.  It's never tense, and almost seems bored with itself at times.  There are long periods where nothing happens, and it focuses on the strained mother-daughter relationship, when it should be more concerned with the nice but kind of creepy guy next door.

Everything about this movie seems off.  It's laid back when it should be scary, and when it tries to be scary, it doesn't try hard enough.  This carries right down to the cast, as it's not just Jennifer Lawrence who seems indifferent and bland in her performance, but everyone else as well.  The scenes where Elissa and Ryan are supposed to be getting closer together generates no chemistry, nor even any hidden tension.  We don't feel afraid for Elissa as she gets closer to this guy like we should.  The film's director, Mark Tonderal, is relatively inexperienced behind the camera, so maybe he lacks confidence.  He certainly doesn't seem to know how to raise a sense of dread, or make us care about these characters.  The main thing that held my interest was trying to figure out what was really going on.  When I got the answers, I wanted to go back to not knowing.  I was having more fun.

 

House at the End of the Street is not terrible, and it at least shows some more effort than some other recent PG-13 thrillers, like The Apparition.  However, when you consider that The Apparition made absolutely no effort whatsoever, that's not really saying a lot.  This is a mediocre and forgettable little movie, and I'm sure Jennifer Lawrence will be doing her best to move past it as quickly as possible.  The sooner the better, I say.

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