La casa sobre el pantano

Evil comes in all shapes and sizes in this compelling morality tale from the bayou.

A woman tries to save her marriage and family with a weekend trip after she finds out he's having an affair. She takes him to a remote estate in rural Louisiana so that they can all get closer. When he forgets to get a questionably available and politically incorrect form of meat for dinner, she finds hell on earth.

The story is a convoluted mix of supernatural, domestic pot boiler and mystery. It's scary and weird fun, with an odd combination of good and terrible acting.

I enjoyed the strangeness of it.

I love a good/bad horror movie and this was that. I had some moments where I genuinely wondered WTF was going on, but all and all, I had fun watching it and I'd absolutely watch a sequel. Was it great? No. Were there some really odd moments? Absolutely. But it was absolutely worth the watch on whatever channel I randomly DVRed it from.

Jessica (Angela Sarafyan) confronts her husband John Chambers (Paul Schneider) with evidence of his affair. He promises to end the affair and the couple takes their daughter Anna (Lia McHugh) to a vacation in the bayou. They had rented a mansion. They get invited to dinner with Isaac (Jacob Lofland) and Grandpappy (Doug Van Liew).

I like this movie. I like the revelations. I like Jessica. John surprised me in a good way although Schneider does over-act after the revelations. It seems like he's trying to earn his villainy. Anna is a weak dope. I get that she's a sheltered teen character but she would be more intriguing if she's smarter than that. Isaac is the best. He never stops being creepy but one can see that some teen girls would fall for that. More can be done with the room. That may be an issue with the budget or imagination. If budget is the case, I would show as little of the room as possible. Don't show John inside the room. All in all, I like the twists and turns and the movie's general creepiness.

I happened to love Hemlock Grove's Season One and I loved and still love It Follows. A House on the Bayou is my favorite kind of horror. Like Hemlock Grove and It Follows, it's mostly unpredictable, it's strange, initially situations seem to escalate out of nowhere but they do go somewhere, there's a dark enigmatic character (Jacob Lofland) and there's a moral lesson at the core of the story. The dialogue is weird at times (Every time someone said Grandpappy, I laughed out loud because it's not 1930 and ridiculous Hollywood writers are so out of touch with the South. No one talks like that in the 21st Century). You don't know what the hell is going on most of the time because just when you think the script is going left, it goes right. And I loved the unsettling tone. I loved the cast. Jacob Lofland's Issac was my favorite. I couldn't stand the daughter. The moralistic message, script, acting, score, tone and direction complemented each other. There's never a dull moment and the runtime flew by. I enjoyed getting lost in this movie's strange Louisiana country mansion and its equally eerie parish.

Not necessarily in a bad way, a very odd movie, but kept my attention easily to the end. I liked it. This is probably the shortest review I have ever left... I found it worth a watch.