OUR HOUSE: Unassuming Horror Is In The Middle Of The Road Territory

It’s fair to say that horror is having a bit of a renaissance at the moment, with directors pushing the stylistic conventions of the genre. Jordan Peele hit the hot potato zeitgeist with his clever and creepy Get Out and this year we have had the stellar double sucker punch of A Quiet Place and Hereditary.

The former gave us a killer premise, executed with edge of your seat precision while the latter provided a genuinely unsettling experience that harked back to vintage horror classics like Rosemary’s Baby (1968). We have even had the re-emergence of the slasher genre with the cheesy but sparky Happy Death Day (2017) – and we have a new Halloween film on the horizon.

But there are still many films occupying this genre that are derivative sequels (most recently The Strangers: Prey at Night) or spin offs of break out hits ala The Conjuring/Insidious. And we also have many throwaway horrors that are the film equivalent of fast food – they appease your appetite at the time but on reflection do not provide any sustenance and ultimately do not satisfy you. Sitting somewhere in the middle of this is Our House, a film that is frustratingly not enough of a tacky but entertaining Friday night type frightener – but also is unable to follow through with its initial mature approach.

Sombre Set Up

Director Anthony Scott Burns’ debut feature film is already in the choppy waters of horror as it is a remake, though it is not simply a reboot of a classic for modern audiences, rather a reworking of one that most audiences won’t have come across – 2010s A Ghost in the Machine. The film begins with a record player, a device that most of us know will be used later in the film to some spooky effect to connect the past to the present. Shots of leafy suburbia confirm the feeling that is an ordinary town and that the family live on an ordinary street.

Their cosy get-together is cut short however when the eldest son of the family Ethan (Thomas Mann) has to leave with his girlfriend Hannah (Nicola Peltz), much to the annoyance of his father. It is a decision that is important to Ethan at the time, but one that will have lasting consequences, particularly as he has not seen his family in months. Ethan and Hannah go to a University lab to do a final test on a device Ethan has created which would break technological barriers, the creation of wireless electricity that would revolutionise households across America and people’s everyday lives.

But the test doesn’t go to plan and in their haste, they fail to notice an ominous black puff of smoke that is omitted. The next day Ethan receives devastating news about his parents and has to abandon his studies and experiments to become a full-time carer for his younger brother Matt (Percy Hynes White) and his little sister Becca (Kate Moyer). As he adjusts to a life of school runs and a job at a hardware store, Ethan cannot let go of his electromagnetic creation.

He tampers away, unwittingly producing some side effects to his experiment and opening up a portal to another dimension with the device’s amplified activity. The family soon realise they can use this to connect with their departed parents and blinded by their grief and the chance to reconnect to their loved ones, they fail to realise that other forces are passing through Ethan’s conductor, ones whose motives are not virtuous.

Mixed Signals

Our House starts out as a family drama, and this is where the film is at its strongest. The chemistry between Thomas Mann and his on screen siblings is natural and convincing, scenes of the three of them coping with the aftermath of their family loss are engaging and full of warmth. Mann, who carries the permanent air of someone who has just been dumped, uses his sad sack range to good effect, his need to find peace with the way he last saw his parents is subtly credible.

The film has the chance to say something about our need for closure, that in our reconnection with those we have lost, we may finally be able to move forward. But these ideas are sadly lost as the film progresses to inevitable horror troupes and clichés – Becca suddenly gets an imaginary friend, a doll is used to signal creepy dread, a mirror begins to spell out words, the record player turns itself on and becomes warped (we knew it was going to happen).

The film, which has been mild and restrained up to this point suddenly begins to hurtle towards a finale where hidden rooms are revealed in a basement and a neighbour warns Ethan of the previous tenants that lived in his house before, as well as the mysterious circumstances of a little girl that disappeared. Horror fans will know where all this is headed and will have spotted the narrative’s track from a mile off and it feels like a lazy laboured ending to a film that could have been better and could have tried harder.

There are some nice touches to the mounting horror in Our House, particularly the use of the black smoke that appears as the device is amped up, it first begins to cling to the sides of the walls, its residents unaware of its proximity. It then turns into a full silhouette of a person who is effectively creepy but this feels wasted in a film that held back the frights and then dumbed them down at the last hurdle.

Our House: Conclusion

Our House is a curious sell, it does not provide enough of the prerequisite jumps and scares for a cheap thrill ride horror but it also doesn’t trust itself, or the audience enough to take the narrative somewhere else. It has the influences of Poltergeist (1982) and the ideas of Pet Sematary (1989), bringing back dead loved ones only to find what you have brought back is not what you expected.

But it never brings those pieces together to form a compelling union. It is a film that will now be stuck in limbo, something too tame for modern horror audiences and something not emotionally satisfying enough for others. In the end Our House simply fails to harness the power of its initial promising premise.

Would you be willing to watch a horror that doesn’t really scare? Will you give Our House a watch out of curiosity? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

Our House was released on VOD in the US on July 27, 2018. For all international release dates, see here.

https://youtu.be/gnNBTWLZ8zQ