Dark House

Ding ding ding ding, JackPot!! WoW, was I impressed or what. I knew Victor Salva was on this one, and his work usually managed to stand tall, but man, if this movie came just a few years sooner it could have been somewhat of a pioneer.

The character complexity is lovely, to actually see people with many faces, not even knowing which one is the real one, the plot, well, it is a movie about a guy that inherits a house and believe it or not, it's actually so much more to it, the tension provided by the sound is quite good, especially considering the fact that they did not use fancy bands or anything, simple and effective, I mean, I actually graded this a 7. Because it works as a horror, it didn't even show nudity, when it could, cause it preferred to rely on something more, and considering this is not a slasher, I have to say, Bravo!!

Look, words will get you psyched on, and I don't wanna send you to somewhere expecting a masterpiece, but in my honest opinion, this is the best "house in the woods" movie I've seen in a long time. Evil Dead the remake was all about gore, Dark House is all about plot. Scares will come, tension will build around you, and question marks will pop all around.

Dark House, thank you for keeping the hope of good horror still alive!

It starts off pretty well, don't they all though, then it gets a bit rushed and disjointed in the middle to end. They could have run another half hour in the second half to explain what the hell was going on a bit more. Not a bad movie though.

Victor Salva is up to his old tricks in DARK HOUSE, another predictable horror yarn featuring buff young men who invariably disrobe at some point for the role. I'm surprised that Salva still manages to find work in Hollywood, not because of his private indiscretions (to put it mildly), but because his films are just so pitiful. CLOWNHOUSE, the two JEEPERS CREEPERS flicks, they've all been below par and DARK HOUSE is no exception.

The house of the title is an ancestral home sought out by a group of faceless teenage types without an ounce of charisma between them. The house has some magical properties including the ability to move at will, but other than that there's little of interest here, apart from the requisite bloodshed. No scares, no atmosphere, just monotony. Lesley-Anne Down has a minor part and there's a nicely complex turn from SAW's Tobin Bell, but otherwise DARK HOUSE is a mess and nothing you've not seen before.

This movie could have been something. The plot is pretty cool, well written and dynamic. The acting is the average for an horror movie. But what makes this not get a 6 or even a 7 to me, is the directing. The director is pretty lame connecting scenes, creating the atmosphere, making the things work. At some point i was thinking to myself: "Dude,this movie is not SO low budget." Cause some of the locations really seemed to cost a little money, the actors are know of the public and even have the Jigsaw on it. Someone paid for this and i really hope that it has been the director cause he's the reason this movie is bad. Anyway, if you don't have nothing to do some random night, give this one a try. It may not amuze you the way it should but can give you some laughs. The sound track is almost inexistent, you can barely hear something there. I don't know what else to say. I watched it just because we are in that period of the year thats the releases are just a little few.

All those title changes, how is one supposed to keep track of them? I did watch this movie at a Festival and it was called "Dark House". You can still find it with that title here, but apparently it changed. Maybe the buzz was not so good and they decided to change it to get a fresh clean sheet/start? Who really knows? And who really knows what's up with horror movies starting off strong and getting weaker by the minute ... like this one right here.

It's a shame, because the mood this creates at the beginning suggests it would (and could) be stronger than it actually is. But it falls (and fails thereby) into clichés and ridiculous twists, that will leave your head spinning faster than Linda Blairs head in the Exorcist (not in a good way obviously).