My review of the film:

A friend of mine challenged me to review a slew of horror movies for the month so here I go. I've loved this one since I first saw it about four years ago.

http://alanjryland.wordpress.com/2014/10/05/the-house-of-the-devil-200 9-ti-west/

Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) is a sweet faced young thing with a bright future ahead of her. Her best friend and confidante, Megan (Greta Gerwig) is a fast talking, hard living party girl who prefers smoking and drinking to actual studying at the university they both attend.Samantha, in contrast, is a dedicated student, but, like most students, she’s flat out broke. She knows full well that she won’t be able to afford classes if she keeps living in her dorm so she searches for an apartment, taking babysitting gigs in the meantime to save up. Then she finds the perfect apartment—but she’s still a little short on cash.

Don’t you worry, the kind and understanding landlady (horror icon Dee Wallace in a quick cameo) tells her. I can hold it for you, but only until after the weekend, so you’ll need to get me the money.

But where is Samantha going to get a few hundred bucks on such short notice?

Then she lands the perfect babysitting gig. She’ll need to travel to a big house out in the countryside. On the night of a lunar eclipse. It’ll pay $400, just what she needs. But there’s a catch…

The House of the Devil is one gigantic homage to the slashers and Satanic ritual flicks which became so popular throughout the 1970s and 1980s and feels almost entirely like an actual relic from that era, right down to time and place and the casting of our lead, who looks like Margot Kidder-lite. Even the marketing campaign highlighted this: The film was simultaneously released on DVD and VHS. The film is also a slow-burner in the same way early Roman Polanski films are; Rosemary’s Baby and The Tenant get nods in particular. Interestingly enough, there are just as many viewers who have complained about this film’s pacing as there are others who wouldn’t have it any other way. Samantha is oftentimes the only character we see onscreen—once the family she’s agreed to work for leaves her to her own devices, the film essentially becomes a one-woman show.

The success of the entire second half of the film hinges on the performance of our lead, who is appropriately charismatic. Donahue’s performance is magnetic and fits seamlessly into the level of suspense director Ti West is intent on cultivating. Her performance is so endearing because so many of us have been in Samantha’s precise situation, crushed by the heftiness of student loans, rising tuition costs and our own desperate need for independence. It is a credit to her abilities as an actress that she can make Samantha’s decision to accept the gig (even when the proprietors of the house display very obvious signs that they are not all they appear to be) understandable and even acceptable.

Still, it is very understandable why many viewers would view her as simply another pig prepped for slaughter. All the warning signs are there, the sort that would send the average person running for the hills. There is, of course, the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Ullmann (horror mainstays Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov) lie about the details of her assignment, claiming initially that she’d be taking care of a small child when she is actually meant to serve as a carer for a cantankerous old mother-in-law who won’t leave her quarters. Then there’s the matter of the pizza Mr. Ullmann suggests she should buy, telling her—in a terribly ominous tone—that it’s very good (emphasising this opinion more than once before the creepy couple finally heads out the door). The second Samantha picks up the house phone and dials the pizza place, she wheels start rolling towards an inevitable finish line.

We’ve seen this before.

Of course we have, but it’s compelling because the film is so obviously in love with the era which inspired it, right down to the hair, make-up and wardrobe choices and the inclusion of Samantha’s trusty Walkman. From the moment the vintage titles flash across the screen, the viewer feels as if he’s stumbled across an old horror classic of the eighties and the subject matter (babysitters in peril and satanism in the suburbs) is a trademark of the period. The film also happens to be shot on 16mm and with this stylistic choice in hand, West completes the time capsule, providing us with the grainy resolution reminiscent of so many other low budget horror classics of the period. Mood is everything and West understands this. The set, this great and rather imposing house in the middle of God’s nowhere, is especially foreboding. It’s the sort of place bursting with secrets, concealing shrieks underneath every moan and creak of its ancient floorboards. When the strange pizza guy hangs around the house after making his delivery, we know that yes—

We’ve seen this before!

—but dread can take root and full blown terror can bloom with the realisation that we, the audience, know something that our heroine does not. The tension can only build and build until she inevitably finds herself at the mercy of an unseen force, these last few moments critical at encompassing the film’s horror elements and though the final act loses steam, feeling hastily thrown together after two thirds of finely constructed suspense, it never feels artificial.

This is an excellent film (and it’s a shame West’s subsequent efforts, particularly The Innkeepers, failed to engage me as much as this one did), but it is a film made for a specific audience, made for cinephiles more so than the casual viewer, who might find themselves noticeably irritated by the very tropes the film embraces. The House of the Devil is a marriage between the old and the new and though When a Stranger Calls and The Sentinel have had years to engrave themselves in the public consciousness, this isn’t to say that a film which so heavily borrows, even replicates its predecessors, can’t become a cult classic on its own merits. The film’s greatest asset is Donahue as its lead, who gleefully commits to a deer-in-the-headlights authenticity which effectively transcends all that is so very self-aware.