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In theaters: Sherlock Holmes. The relationship between Holmes and Watson was fun. Rachel McAdams, however, was very underwhelming as Irene Adler.
The day the Earth Stood Still. The new version. It sucks. Original way better despite no special effects.
This one sounds right up my alley, just added it to my netflix q, thanks!House of the Devil.
Now, this was an interesting movie. A pretty typical 70s/early 80s horror film about a college girl stumbling onto a satanist cult, with a slow, atmospheric build-up that runs completely counter to the slasher films that were just starting to take over the genre back then, not to mention the 30 years of parody, deconstruction and post-ironic gorefests the genre has gone through since... except the film was made in 2009.
Basic story: our college student heroine answers an ad for a babysitter. Turns out the guy behind it is a bit odd and lives in a big house some miles outside town, and the job he has for her isn't exactly what the ad offered, but she needs the money and so she accepts... and so now she's alone in that big creepy house with the person she's supposed to be watching.
As a period piece, it really is almost flawless; not only is the film clearly set back then, but it all looks like it was made then too. The entire film has a chilly, washed-out-coloured atmosphere that echoes The Exorcist and Dead Zone, with long tracking shots, no quick-style cutting, very little special effects, long periods of near-silence so that the slightest noise makes you jump - looking to be consistently creepy (up until the finale) rather than shocking. Even the opening credits look 70s-ish. You might say it gets right the same things that The Strangers got right for its first half and then milks that for most of the film. Which is both its great strength and its great weakness; apart from one huge and very quick "Did that just happen?" moment, nothing very horriffic even happens up until well over an hour into the 90-minute film - up until then, it's mostly just a girl walking around in a big creepy house owned by creepy people (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov), scaring herself occasionally, and our increasing sense of dread is as much due to what doesn't happen; we know it's a horror film, there are lots of little touches telling us it's a horror film, it's so consistently serious that we know something really really bad is going to happen, and every minute the film skirts around it just adds to the creepiness. Or alternately, bores you stiff, depending on your mood and desire for quick gratification, I suppose. But don't worry, it really tries to compensate in the end.
House of the Devil is almost ridiculously slow. It's a deliberate throwback to such an extent that I'm not sure if I'm supposed to love it for being like nothing else made today or shrug it off as merely a good recreation. Except it's too creepy to do the latter. In the end, it's not a great 70s/early 80s movie about satanic cults. It's no Rosemary's Baby, The Beyond, or Omen. It is, however, a good one. + or -.
Avatar 3D this 'noon-awesome!