The House of the Devil (2009)

In the light of the November home-video release of Ti West's Pearl, I figured it was about time I go back and cover a few of the horror auteur’s previous works. Now, I’m aware that The Roost and Trigger Man came out before this, and I do intend to cover those eventually, along with 2013’s The Sacrament and that one western he did with Ethan Hawke and John Travolta. But first, let’s talk about his first true cult hit, 2009’s The House of the Devil. Little known outside of true horror hounds, it follows a young college student named Samantha as she struggles to find a way to scrape up the money to pay for a modest apartment in the city while she attends university. Luckily, a mysterious Mr. Ullman has been hanging up flyers in the area, searching desperately for a babysitter. After a series of strange run-ins and cold shoulders, Sam assumes she’s been passed over in favor of someone else, only for Mr. Ullman to suddenly call back, more desperate than ever and offering to pay just about anything Sam wants for a single night of babysitting… Could it be too good to be true?

"Based on true unexplained events..."

Now the first thing any and everybody will tell you about this film is that it’s set in the eighties and appropriately styles itself as a product of that era. In modern films, this would usually mean colored gels and synth music, but here, they go for something a little more akin to Rosemary’s Baby crossed with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s understated and extremely grainy, having originally been shot on 16mm, but there can be no denying that it looks authentic. And the soundtrack is mostly traditional horror cues when it’s not playing eighties pop hits. Stranger Things this is not, and thank god for that.

And it’s not just the broad strokes it nails; from the use of title credits, freeze frames, and snap zooms, right down to the editing and cinematography, everything screams eighties. And it’s got plenty of that era's star power to spread around as well, just a little more conservatively than today’s big budget nostalgia-thons do: there’s Dee Wallace Stone in a very brief role that’s absolutely perfect for her always-reliable motherly charms, there’s Tom Noonan playing yet another imposing character that's equal parts polite and creepy, and of course, there’s Mary Woronov, who contributes much subtle humanity to her character in her brief screentime. They’re accompanied by a number of younger character actors, like AJ Bowen and Greta Gerwhig, and just about everybody gives it their all. 

These are the things that contribute to its feeling like an authentic lost film of the seventies or eighties, but what really sells it ends up being the quality of its filmmaking more than anything. Ti West, as he’s done with nearly every film he’s made since, takes a rootsy, almost Tarantino -esque approach to horror. He doesn't try to outsmart old staples or tropes, nor does he let any modern desire to address social issues figuratively through horror get in the way of old-fashioned thrills and chills. In fact, he defies this notion by opening the film with a title card that not only claims that the film is entirely true, but which also briefly reminds the audience of the "Satanic Panic" of the eighties, setting us up for something a little more subversive than what we actually get. In fact, the whole film feels like it could have been put together by some misguided church group as propaganda to frighten teenagers into being good little boys and girls and staying away from drugs, heavy metal music, and remote babysitting jobs that pay a little too well. And although this may sound horribly behind the times, all that matters is that it's legitimately frightening. Like many nightmares, The House of the Devil is irrational and unsupported by reality, but still exerts a curious power to upset and disturb even the most liberal among horror fans.

They don't write 'em like that anymore

Another thing that can be seen in most of West’s work is an emphasis on characters in the classic definition of such. We only know as much as we need to know about them for the movie to work, and none of them are entirely evil or entirely good. 

Samantha, our heroine, is a great example of this. As this film runs on Hitchcockian suspense and dramatic irony, you will spend a good deal of the runtime screaming at the main character not to do whatever idiotic thing it is they’re about to do, and this could run the risk of making Sam come off as something of a moron. But the thing is, the film’s sparse introduction goes to great lengths to quickly establish just how much Sam wants out of her dorm, which she shares with a noisy slob who often locks Sam out of the room anytime she and her beau are going at it, so we at least understand why she’s willing to forgive a great many red flags if it means being able to pay Dee Wallace Stone her first month’s rent. She has a sparse backstory that is only hinted at (she doesn’t want to talk about her mother, she’s obviously got no kind of financial safety net while she’s at university) but it’s enough to make her feel like an actual character and not just a sacrificial lamb.

My favorite example of West’s approach to characterization, and how it differs from someone like, say, Eli Roth, is Greta Gerwhig’s character Megan. In another film, she’d be annoying and unlikable from minute one, for practical reasons that come into play later on. Here, she’s not far from it exactly, given that her debut sees her bouncing around, sucking her greasy fingers while eating pizza, and babbling in various silly voices. Oh, and she has a rich daddy. ...aaand she also ends up sealing both her's and Sam’s fates by deciding to take down all of Ullman’s posters after he leaves Sam hanging, however unknowingly. But for all her faults, she’s ultimately punished simply for helping her friend out, and she even gets one of the most relatable moments in the film when she rightly tells Sam that she’s insane for deciding to take Ullman’s offer, no matter how much money it’s worth. 

*spoilers*

This makes her eventual death, an extremely cruel one at that, a potent and shocking moment. Your stomach almost churns when you picture her rich daddy searching everywhere for her, knowing she’ll never be found once the antagonists coldly dispose of her body.

As far as the villains go, we don’t know much about them, but they really seem to believe in whatever they’re doing. They murder Megan and probably the other girl who declined Ullman’s offer when she found out what it entailed (Is she one of those three corpses stowed away in the locked upstairs bedroom?) but aside from AJ Bowen’s psychotic enforcer, none of them ever lay a finger on Sam after the ritual has been performed, even at the cost of their own lives. This doesn’t exactly make them sympathetic, but it does make the whole situation feel extremely, uncomfortably vague and nebulous.

*end of spoilers*

One thing leads to another

These intelligently drawn heroes and villains come together over the course of one of the most well-structured horror films I’ve ever seen. It begins with a quiet opening act, which establishes our heroine, her financial situation, and a potential chance to climb out of it in the form of a lucrative babysitting job. As the red flags just keep popping up and the tension builds and builds, there’s a sudden, extremely shocking, and violent scene just outside the titular House, and then BAM! We’re in Act Two, wherein Samantha bums around the house for a while: exploring, rocking out with her trusty Walkman, and following a breadcrumb trail of clues to the true nature of the Ullman’s and their “mother.”

This middle chunk is one of the more divisive aspects of the film, as it demands your undivided attention in order to be as immersive as possible. It contains little dialogue and no big fake-out scares or anything of the sort: just ever-piling tension, but what I think really makes it work so well is the fact that such a sudden violent moment immediately proceeds it all, demonstrating that something fucked up is going on behind the scenes, we just aren’t privy to it yet. Talk about dramatic irony. When Sam rings Megan later and keeps getting her answering machine, it's enough to make one's skin crawl. Well, that and the fact that we know that Ullman’s mother is always lurking somewhere in the house, she’s just choosing not to be seen at the moment, though occasional footfalls can be heard when Samantha strains to hear…

*spoilers*

And before you know what’s happening - BAM! Act 3. Samantha wakes up tied to a Satanic altar, is fed the blood of the antichrist, breaks free, kills her pursuers, and then, realizing that something horrible is growing inside of her, turns the gun on herself in a last-ditch effort to prevent the Ullman’s plans from coming to fruition. I do find the ease with which she kills her attackers a little too Get Out for my tastes, but at least she seems heavily affected by it, and it is creepy that most of them just let her kill them with little resistance, ala Kill List. I think what really sells all of this is the fact that it takes so long for The House of the Devil to make the shift into outright, go-for-broke horror that it feels almost surreal when it finally gets there. But regardless, as far as climaxes go, this is about as climatic as it gets. And the frenzied pacing makes Sam’s split-second decision to kill herself in order to stop the antichrist from being born more believable than it might have otherwise been.

*end of spoilers*

Bottom-line? It’s scary. Director Ti West makes the most of his horror plot and characters by making all the right creative decisions. He doesn’t overthink his narrative, enjoying the simple thrills and chills of the familiar premise, while still approaching it with every bit of the consideration of an auteur who is convinced he’s making art to last an eternity. And he does it all with comparatively little money and a cast that puts in work. While it might not blow the minds of those who prefer their horror to be a bit more allegorical or socially conscious, it’s so effective at what it does that I feel it would be inappropriate to try and image what else it could have been: it is what it is, and what it is is killer.