gavin6942 In rural Alabama, two couples find themselves in a fight for survival. Running from a maniac (The Tin Man) bent on killing them, they flee deep into the woods and seek refuge in a house. They soon realize the killer has purposely lured them to this house and that they are now trapped.The best thing about this film? An incredible genre cast: Michael Madsen, Leslie Easterbrook, Bill Moseley, Lew Temple and even Lance Henriksen. Director Robby Henson's work has also attracted such acclaimed actors Billy Bob Thornton, Patricia Arquette, Patricia Clarkson, Chris Cooper, William DeVane and Kris Kristofferson. This is not one of the better films, though.We have terrible acting (especially from the country-singing wife), awful direction, and cinematography that seems obsessed with blue /green coloration for no reason. Moseley plays his usual self, and audiences are getting sick of it.Although it is hard to say for sure, one assumes the novel by Frank E. Peretti and Ted Dekker has to be better than the film it became. The novel is apparently Christian fiction, though it seems odd with such lines as, "God came to my house and I killed him."

Jared Midwood Keep in mind that I watched House having already read the book by Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti. In keeping with what reviewers have already said, the book was exponentially better; it was truly terrorizing, and well-paced with fantastic memorable characters. Frankly put, it was one of the best books I have read and probably one of the top 5 killer thrillers of all time. The spiritual message was also strong and unambiguous. But this is not a review on the book, so moving on ...To be fair, House the movie never had a chance of succeeding since it was crippled by the typical Christian movie low budget. It achieved slightly more than the dreadful Left Behind films, but was much worse than recent religious movies such as God's Not Dead and even Dekker's other famous movie Thr3e.The story of house is horrific and not for the squeamish, but this real terror never came through in the movie. It is not even that scary. The R rating is absolutely absurd; it could have passed for PG if it had come about via mainstream Hollywood. There is no blood, sex, and the only curse is "hell" once. What is the R for? Apparently pure shock value.Michael Madsen is wasted as the psychopathic Tin Man. In the book the killer - otherwise known as Barsidious White - is a terrifying madman and one of the most memorable modern literary villains. But in the movie he is just corny. The mask is horrendously done, his jerky movements are humorous, and the stupid voice overs are reminiscent of a low budget Indie horror flick. The Tin Man never really gets going, and his dialogue is forced and stale.The members of the house are fairly scary, although Betty is a bit stereotypical. Pete makes a decent sex pervert chasing after one of the refugees, and Bill Moseley's excellent performance as Stewart is responsible for at least 2 of the 4 stars I gave the movie.The travelers themselves are fairly lame, although they look the part. As soon as Randy opens his mouth you can tell he is a soap opera dufus. Jack and Stephanie are too attractive to be taken seriously, and Leslie would be a good actor if it weren't for her perpetual cheesy grin. The acting by all four ultimately falls flat.Susan, the angel trapped in the house who ultimately sacrifices her life for the good of the others, is a bright spot about halfway through the movie. True, she is too cute to be taken seriously as a victim of a deranged serial killer, but she plays the part well and is probably the strongest character in the movie besides Stewart. The depth of her sacrifice is not lost on the movie's viewers, even in the midst of the tragically bad filmmaking.The music in the movie is pretty good, but the actual visual effects are pretty lame and the quality of the picture is not so hot. The dialogue falls into soap opera cheesiness at times, but for the most part it is not horrible. The plot is based loosely on the book but is not always representative of the ideals Peretti and Dekker were trying to convey. God is not mentioned much, if at all, and the spiritual side of the story is missing. Keep in mind that the Hollywood depravity of most horror thrillers is also missing, refreshingly.Perhaps this movie would have been better if the directors and producers had not deviated so much from the plot of the novel, and if they had maintained the spiritual aspect of the narrative. The book was dynamic, the movie falls short.Labelled as a horror movie, House is not so much horror as it is blandly scary. The producers throw in some pentagrams and 666's for good measure, but even the Satanism of the house's inhabitants is not that scary. It just seems silly. Without spoiling the outcome of the movie, there is also a fair amount of bloodless killing, but it is somewhat expected and not that shocking.One aspect of the movie I enjoyed was the LOST-esque flashbacks to the "sins" of the four characters. Melissa's death is heart-wrenching, and the revelation that Leslie was raped by her uncle elicits some sympathy for her character. At least the brass behind the movie got this film technique right.Overall, House is not a bad movie, but it is not an especially good one. It falls a tad flat for the most part, but it is worth a watch. Go into it not expecting much, and you should get at least some mild enjoyment out of it. The younger you watch it the more you will like it. And the less experienced of a horror fan you are the more scared you will be.To borrow the story's catchphrase, the only way out is in ...

Justin Bailey I have to say...the cinematographer of this film should never work with film again. It looks like MAYBE 50% of the film was shot on 35mm while all the inserts and a few "action sequences" were filmed on digital in very low lighting. It looks like they didn't bother white-balancing the digital DV cameras, because there's horrible video gain in a good portion of the film. The color's of the lighting are completely inconsistent and look like they serve no story-driving purpose. Randomly people will be green or yellow or orange, and it changes all the time. The only reason I could think of that someone would do that, is if they were trying to make the view uncomfortable. In reality, the feeling i got was annoyed. The DP, also seemed to not know what a hair-light, kicker, back-light, etc. are because there seems to be almost a total lack of one in almost every shot. Needless to say, the lighting as well as the ridiculous camera angles and unnecessary, obsession with rack focusing unnecessarily, completely destroyed this film for me.Which, was sad, because i'll be honest the acting (which usually is what ruins a film) wasn't half bad. So, we know the director wasn't a total knob. The editing left something to be desired, though, the constant jump cuts of inserts could work if they were used only once or twice, but 5x in every scene is just annoying and excessive.I couldn't sit through the whole thing personally, and that has only happened with 4 films out of hundreds I've seen.

Fatmadxb I have always said that there is never a bad movie, each movie at least has a good part in it. I never imagined that I'd ever rate a movie 1/10. I actually think it deserves a ZERO but that's not possible here.The movie is simply TERRIBLE, terrible can't even do the movie justice. IT IS HORRIBLE! I can't believe it! I watched the trailer and looked forward to it I thought it would be exciting and scary. It wasn't! First of all this movie is COMEDY, wait I think it's actually "SCARY MOVIE" in disguise. The acting was TERRIBLE! The music was TYPICAL and VERY BAD. There was no storyline, I mean seriously! I still have no clue what HAPPENED, or what the story was! It was freaking, not confusing, but weird in a bad BAD way! Oh and don't let me start talking about the make up HORRIBLE, some characters looked like CLOWNS. What the HELL. I can NOT believe this movie was released! It should be banned, it's SO bad that it makes you laugh! I laughed so hard on how bad this was! When I entered the theater about 20 people were there, when the movie finished only 3 were left (me and my friends) everyone LEFT. I had hope that it would suddenly, suddenly BE GOOD, but NO NO NOOOOO!!! -SPOILER- THE ENDING? WHAT THE HELL. They were dead ALL along, do they think that would spice things up? It made me laugh, it made it WORST.Waste of time AND MONEY! The only good thing that came out of this is that now I know what is the WORST movie EVER and I can warn people not to watch it! 0.5/10 DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE. I read the reviews and I didn't believe them, and watched this movie, oh I wish I believed them.DON'T WATCH IT!!!!!