Movie Review - House at the End of the Street

The midnight showing this week as House at the End of the Street. It was...ok. Overall good but with a lot of plot-holes. I felt the movie left you with more questions than answers, and not in a good way. It's not a bad movie, just a movie that has some problems here and there.

House at the End of the Street is about Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) and her mother (Elizabeth Shue) who just moved from Chicago to a small town somewhere in or near Penn State, not sure if they specified besides that it was 2 days worth of driving from Chicago. They got their house for dirt cheap because their empty house next door was the scene of a double homicide, where a young girl killed her parents and fled. The young girl evidently drowned in a nearby lake yet no body was ever found, and 4 years late that's still the hugest thing the town can talk about. We soon find out that the house actually isn't empty, instead the son of the murdered family, Ryan (Max Thieriot), lives there by himself. Elissa, finding herself at a distance from the "popular" kids, has a chance meeting with Ryan and develops a liking to him, soon hanging out with him any chance she got; even after her mother declares she doesn't like Elissa hanging out with Ryan (at an awkward dinner between the three of them), Elissa still won't give up. The big secret is that Max's sister actually isn't dead, instead he is keeping her in his basement locked away due to her mental instability. I can't really tell you much more at this point without going into spoilers, which I'll do in a separate section.

There really isn't any problems with the acting. Elizabeth Shue does a good job, but at times she appears distant and it leads me to wonder if they're trying to make her character a hidden layer that is never explained. Jennifer Lawrence does a great job as a quasi-outsider, her only friends being another group of quasi-outsiders that form a band (which we definitely do not see enough of!). Max Thieriot was creepy creepy creepy, which perfectly fit his character. He exudes the dark and stormy personality that his character needs, a sense of mystery surrounding him.

I did have a problem with the directing and cinematography. It felt like the movie was directed by two different people with the first half being filled with a lot experimental shots whereas the second half is more of a horror feel. The first half features a lot of random scenes where the camera is at a strange angle yet the same scene just a different shot has it level. One time in particular we had Elizabeth Shue at at a 25 degree angle yet when we switched back to Jennifer Lawrence she was level. And they were each standing in the same room, facing each other. No need for that at all. There were also many shots that were intentionally blurry yet for no reason at all.

Now in the second half, I didn't have any problems. In fact, they had a perfect first-person shot scene where someone is using a faulty flashlight. It has a feel like the game Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, where you only see through a flashlight in first person mode. Very similar feel, and with it flickering on and off it brought on a great sense of suspense.

I did enjoy the plot of the movie, despite the plot holes. Usually I can tell when a twist is about to come up, yet this time around they did a great job of not really dropping any major hints. They did a great thing with the big reveal and left the pieces for you to assemble instead of telling the ABCs of everything.

I would suggest this a matinee showing. With so many other movies out this weekend that all appear better, save this for a cheaper time. It is a fun movie with just some hiccups here and there.

SPOILERS

Ok, here are some of the things that lowered the quality of the film. A couple are plot holes, others are just things that make no sense. I won't spoil everything as there are still plenty of surprised that I don't touch on.

Throughout the whole movie, almost everyone in town trash talks Ryan for no reason. According to the story, he wasn't even living at the house when his sister went crazy and killed their parents. Yet he instead moved home a year before the start of the movie and refused to sell his house, and suddenly now he's the villain to everyone. One scene we have him going to hear Elissa's band play, and all the popular kids randomly decide to trash his car! No warning, just BANG with the bat breaking a window. When Ryan runs out to stop them, 6 of the kids gang up on and him start giving him a serious beat down. And again, for no real reason! He wasn't living in the area when his parents were murdered so he should not be turned into the town villain, instead he should be the town sob-story.

As for the twist I mentioned earlier, it is revealed that Ryan's sister that he kept in the basement was actually not related to him. Instead he captures girls, forces blue-colored contact lenses on them, and chains them in the basement. There are a few things that don't fully make sense. Earlier in the movie, his "sister" escaped and tried grab a knife to seemingly kill Elissa yet Ryan luckily thwarted her without revealing to Elissa anyone was there. Why would Ryan's sister want to kill Elissa when she doesn't even know who she is? Only explanation I can think of is that she was actually wanting to kill Ryan instead, yet they definitely made it appear she was planning to go after Elissa instead.

Another plot hole with her being locked in the basement is that Ryan constantly drugs her with something that makes her lucid and put to sleep. Where is he getting these kinds of drugs? This type of stuff is not over the counter type of things, it's an injection of some sort.

One of the biggest plot holes, in my opinion, is when the cop Weaver (Gil Bellows) goes to Ryan's house in search of the missing Elissa. He begins searching the house, knowing that Elissa must be there. Ryan kills him, and soon afterwards we have Elissa's mother coming to search for Elissa. The big problem is, what about Weaver's cop car? Ryan didn't have any time to move it as he didn't even have time to move the body of Weaver, instead having to take care of an escaping Elissa. Weaver's car was in the front driveway and Elissa's mom should have seen it and known something was up, yet we see her drive her car to the same spot the cop car was only it's not there anymore.


One goof that annoyed me was that there were several Mason jars in the tunnel to his "sister's" room that kept disappearing and reappearing, sometimes in the same scene at different angles. That's just poor continuity which I always get annoyed at.