House at the End of the Street (2012)

Haaahaaa! Katniss still lives with her mommy!

Jennifer Lawrence plays a young woman (Lawrence) who moves with her mother (Elizabeth Shue) to their dream house in a rural community only to discover that the house next door was the location of a grizzly murder years before. A daughter killed her parents in their beds, and disappeared – leaving only a brother, Ryan (Max Thieriot), as the sole survivor.

Why oh why did I see this freakin’ movie?!? Oh wait, I know why. I see it for all of you, and for all of you to know that yes, I still do watch current movies, as shitty as they may be. And I do mean that: AS SHITTY AS THEY MAY BE.

Right from the start of this flick, I knew it was going to be shit. For some odd reason, director Mark Tonderai felt the need to add a whole bunch of weird/colorful effects onto some of these scenes where he’s almost yelling at us; “Hey, this is the part where you’re suppose to feel scared!”. Problem is, we don’t feel scared and the frenetic movements just didn’t do a single lick for me and made it look like I was watching a music-video. Seriously, one of these scenes takes place at a party where kids are drinking and doing kiddish-like things (total debauchery), and it’s weird because the camera does these nifty, little tricks with itself where it slows-up, then rewinds, and continues to keep-on going. This probably makes absolutely no sense to the readers who didn’t see this (and I urge you not to), but in other words: it seems like it came straight from an American Pie-music video. Yeah, pretty lame.

Even though Tonderai tries, he still cannot seem to get at all past the terrible script that seems a bit confused on what it actually sets out to be. What I mean about that is that the film is advertised as one, creepy, horror movie where the creepy neighbor somehow finds his way of doing some weird shit, to this new, innocent girl. Obviously that’s all predictable stuff, which is exactly what this flick is, but it’s worse because the film really isn’t a horror movie at all. Instead of the first 4 minutes and last 20 minutes, everything else is dedicated to this fluffy love story of a blossoming relationship between said creepy neighbor and new, innocent girl. I’m not a horror-lover, but if I went out to see this flick and realized that this was the shit I was getting, I would be flippin’ furious to see that half of the movie is just showing these two ladies (mother and daughter), try to get jumped already, even if they haven’t been in the town for no longer than 2 weeks.

Then, when the actual horror stuff comes in, it’s nothing new, exciting, or original for that matter. Hell, that could be said for this whole film, in general. There is absolutely no surprises whatsoever that come out of this story and it even borrows from other movies. Think of the creepy kid as a young, blonder version of Norman Bates, and think of the cave that Wild Bill put his victims in and that’s pretty much the same type of villain you’re working with here. However, as bad-ass and crazy as the mixture of Norman Bates and Wild Bill may sound, it does not play-out like that one-bit and everything this kid goes through is exactly what you would expect from a cheap, horror thriller, without any horror, or any thrilling moments whatsoever. Heck, even those jump-scares felt cheap and they usually work on me no matter what the horror film may be.

Speaking of the kid, poor Max Thieriot. I know that this kid doesn’t have the best track-record out there but at least he looks good, is versatile, and can make the best out of any shit that gets thrown at him. The problem is, this kid Ryan just seems like a total one-note weirdo that rubbed me the wrong way, the first time he showed his blue eyes on-screen. There’s a couple of neat-o twists with this character and how Thieriot plays him, but nothing too special to where you think, “Wowwwwww. That is something I have never seen done before, ever.” Didn’t think that once with this character, and come to think of it, didn’t think that once with this whole film.

The only reason why this film is getting a wide-release at all, and sadly, was numero uno at the box-office was all because of Jennifer Lawrence and the breakout star quality she has with her for now. Apparently, she did this film before Winter’s Bone and when that came out and garnered her an Oscar nomination, then of course they knew they had to try and get this film a release date, but then it got even better. X-Men: First Class and The Hunger Games both came out and catapulted her to total stardom and this is where the powers that be knew they had an opportunity on their hand, so why the eff not try and bring this out to the public, even if it does seem like straight-to-DVD shitola.

I can’t rag on Lawrence too much here since it’s obvious that this girl doesn’t want anything to do with this flick and knew she didn’t even want to when she was filming the film in general. She has the same emotion on her face the whole movie and when she starts to get scared and scream, it seems forced as if the director held out a twenty dollar bill and told her to scream. I don’t know what sick fuck would even think about that, let alone a movie director, but hey, she could have been desperate at that time and needed more added to her salary. Even poor (and possibly is since she’s doing this shit) Elisabeth Shue in this shit as her mommy, and makes me sad whenever I think about the fact that this woman has actually been nominated for an Oscar, and dammit, she should have won. It’s a sad, sad thought when you think about how her co-star in that movie, Nicolas Cage, is having a bigger and better career then she is.

Consensus: House at the End of the Street (aka, HATES, for all of your tweeters out there) is exactly what you would expect from a horror movie with a lame-ass title like this: no surprises, no scares, no fun, no nothing.

1.5/10=Crapola!!