The House

The set-up of 'La Casa' aka The House reminded very much of 'Last Shift'. Not the setting (instead of a police station we get a large abandoned house) but the story's focus on the protagonist and locations horrific past. Rather slight when comes to the plot and one-note in execution frames this Chilean haunted house feature, but surprisingly effective in crafting an uneasiness despite the low-scale limitations.

Set in t1980s Chile, a cop gets despatched to investigate a disturbance at a vacant house, which happens to hold a horrific past. While dealing with his own personal demons, he must also deal with the house's unwelcoming demons. Plenty of wandering dark rooms and corridors, with little light. Screams can be heard, entities make themselves known, and the threat might just come from what's in his own head.

In all rather basic, though the electronic score works and the demons actually have creep factor. Supposedly the gimmick was they filmed it in an actual cursed haunted house. Also halfway through the end credits, we get a little more footage.

The movie is an amateur effort at best. The first 20+ minutes getting to the house is minutes on end of the cop driving to the house..a nice "back of his head" shot, with nothing else going on but Spooky music. The use of basic strobe and flood lights is also very obvious! Done on the cheap! I don't mind a low budget effort, but MAKE an effort rather then pad the runtime. On a positive note, the ghosts ARE creepy when they start showing up..but it's too little, too late and can't save this borefest. Avoid it!

La Casa is an intimately upsetting paranormal experience. Jorge Olguín stresses said "intimacy" by summoning the horrific reports that have infamously dubbed Chile's "Casa Dubois" one of the country's top haunted destinations. In doing so, cinematography lends itself to found-footage signatures that embrace the first-person aesthetic; a single camera follows the film's protagonist over-shoulder but doesn't exist in continuity. It's an experiment that recalls Silent House, blended with REC

LA CASA (The House) is a nifty little haunted house feature from Chile that dares to put practically the entire movie on the shoulders of its protagonist. Apart from rather superfluous footage of film-making crews roaming the house bookending the movie, it gives a real-time account of a Chilean cop in 1986 who responds to a disturbance call and enters a house with gruesome and reputedly demonic history (without knowing about its past).

When there is only one character for most of the duration of the movie, the quality of the acting becomes paramount, but fortunately the actor does a really convincing job of portraying an increasingly terrified cop trapped in the lair of a demon that seems to know his darkest secret.

The increase in tension is very deliberate and the atmosphere is well-executed. There is a twist at the end which was not entirely unforeseeable-it reminded me of a twist in MEMENTO (2000)- but it adds an interesting political dimension which for some reason the film-makers seemed reluctant to explore.

Chile was a military dictatorship between 1973 and 1990, and I would have welcomed a more fleshed-out treatment of this issue, since the film-makers decided to make it an aspect of the movie. It is quite short as is, and if extra time was needed, the bookend footage could have been eliminated with little loss to the integrity of the whole.

The film takes a simple idea and executes it well. It could have elaborated more on the various elements it touches upon, and I think that would have elevated it, but for people looking for a quick diversion barely over an hour long, this bare-bones haunted house story will be fine.

I would give a zero if I could. Don't know why that review said it was "fast paced". It was sooooo slow. 90% of the movie was the guy slowly walking around the house with a flashlight looking scared. Every now and then a ghost or demon made an brief appearance. Absolute and total waste of time. I don't understand how this got made.