‘The House of the Devil’ Is Still a Satanic G.O.A.T.

The House of the Devil
Dark Sky Films

Back in May 2010, a ‘90s heritage took its first step into the lost halls of obscurity when Hollywood Video declared bankruptcy. Mail-order DVDs were taking and helm of video rental, and streaming was on the horizon. What could have been marked as a sad day in movie history was marked with the happy abandonment of super-sales by Hollywood Video, looking to sell off its vast inventory. In early summer 2010, I found myself in Hollywood Video’s horror section, gleefully picking through the aisles of discount DVDs. This is how I first came upon The House of the Devil.

The cover was an evocative portrait of a house on fire, illuminating the melancholy profile of a young woman. On the back, I was immediately captivated by her pointed silhouette and the small, familiar face of Tom Noonan. I was somewhat perplexed I hadn’t heard of this ‘80s gem, searching the cover art for a director and release year, only to be met with the surprising information that this was a new film.

Released in 2009, directed by Ti West (my brain gaped slightly, who?), something drew me in about the throwback vibes and familiar actors. I blind bought the DVD with several other, more familiar fair.

This is perhaps the best blind purchase I’ve ever made.

Dark Sky Films

Watching the film that same night, I was entranced by the gritty VHS cinematography, Panaglide scene mapping, and Dee Wallace’s cameo. The soundtrack grooved with guitar-synth psychotic cheddar you can’t help bop your head to. I was transported to 1983 Connecticut in a vision of pure time-warp excellence through the use of 16mm film and plain-clothes ‘80s style. Apartments are only $300! Portable cassette players! Acid wash shorts! Babysitting gigs on flyers! Satanic Panic! I truly couldn’t believe I’d somehow missed this at the time of release.

The simple story of The House of the Devil is one of Samantha Hughes (Jocelin Donahue), a college student hoping to move out of her dorm room and away from her sleep-all-day roommate. Needing to come up with cash quickly for a rental she loves, Samantha takes a questionable babysitting job out in the country, the terms of which grow more uneasy as she reaches the gothically Victorian home with her friend, Megan (Greta Gerwig) and meets the Ullmans (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov). After being offered a sum she couldn’t possibly refuse, Samantha stays, Megan and the “parents” leave, and Sam’s got the house pretty much to herself.

The time clicks by as Samantha dances to The Fixx’s “One Thing Leads to Another,” inspects the grounds, and continues to find curious contradictions to her predicament. The fur coats aren’t downstairs; they’re in an upstairs closet. The family photos don’t portray the Ullmans, but that same car is outside. Noise keeps coming from the attic. The tension reaches a fever pitch as the lunar eclipse settles in, and Sam is caught up in an occult ritual she was almost fated to take part in.

RELATED: Ti West Says Mia Goth Deserved an Oscar for ‘Pearl’

The House of the Devil premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 25th, 2009. It received a limited theatrical release on October 30, 2009, with VOD available nearly a month prior. It received mainly positive reviews, with many of the critics noting that while it’s nothing original, The House of the Devil banks on Hitchcockian levels of suspense and well-crafted slow-burn  to bring about the ultimate truth that this is how horror film “should be made.”

The House of the Devil has gone on to receive a truly cult following in a niche and saturated market. With our fetishism of the ‘80s, the film should be a shoo-in for mainstream affection. But one of the best things about The House of the Devil is despite being set in the ‘80s; it never fetishized the era. It treats the decade with referential, but never reverential, discourse as it pulls viewers into a quiet and entrancing world. While we do get the “satanic panic” title card, the film never goes full-stop “based on true events” mythos. It’s a maybe, a happenstance, an “it happened to my sister’s-best friend’s-cousin’s-nail stylist’s-aunt” type of narrative that jars the viewer into suspending his or her disbelief. The care and love Ti West put into the film showed boundless expectations for the then-young filmmaker out of the mumblecore clan.

The real inspiration of the film comes from its unique and humbled style, which also played a role in it not being taken up by the mainstream. When I think back on the satanic G.O.A.T.s of horror, I think of Psycho, The Omen, Halloween, and Rosemary’s Baby, all of which played a major role in influencing how West treated his third film. He accomplishes the genre in spades, stylistically toppling the gore-hound exhibition of The Human Centipede, Drag Me to Hell, and Saw VI, also released in 2009. The film breathes into the visceral depth of horror as unsettling and macabre instead of camp and grue. While both styles have places in my heart, when you talk about truly great horror flicks, the ones that leave you feeling battered and breathless, The House of the Devil remains in upper-echelons of horror history, all on a budget under $1,000,000.

Part of the film’s brooding brilliance is an impeccably crafted score by Jeff Grace. After setting the mood with electric guitar and synthesizers, there is a subtlety of piano verse that’s as stirring as it is foreboding. Violin slides pique our interest in quiet moments, both breaking the tension and driving toward the film’s horrifying climax. Everything crescendos to its breaking point, building a poetic and driving force to the narrative as a whole. The minimalist approach paired with a soundtrack laden with soft hits of the ‘80s delivers in setting the mood, tone, and era. Death Waltz Recording Co. released the soundtrack on vinyl in 2014, which is truly a must-own for any soundtrack aficionados, with a cover by Tom Hodge (The Dude Designs) and a red translucent pressing.

RELATED: The True Story of ‘The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It’

Ti West continued his slow-burn cinema with two more afterthoughts of horror – The Innkeepers (2011) and The Sacrament (2013) – both of which were treated as standard horror fair. Both of these I love, because West draws from very simplistic starting points and lights a match that’s about the burn your forest down. There’s a profound unease to the way West releases his vision on an audience, tapping into the vein of horror as art. It’s something director Ari Aster would capture with more crippling dread years after. West has fallen into the realm of TV director in recent years after his obscure and fumbling western In a Valley of Violence (2016). But there was something truly special and sincere about The House of the Devil as a stake in the heart of overproduced Hollywood jump-scare saturation. He can do it better for way less money.

The House of the Devil made its limited theatrical release to the tune of $101,215. But with the promotional release in a VHS clamshell and word-of-mouth, the film eventually picked up steam in the horror community, and to this day, new eyes are picking up the grossly under-watched film. It was recently featured on Shudder’s The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs and seems to be an unspoken favorite of many genre fans.

It’s odd to think back, finding this movie in Hollywood Video at the end of its era, how profoundly meaningful the setup was. Discovering a modern film in a dying movie rental store, a film that, at the time, captured an already lost style and revived it – if only for its run-time. It’s always a beautiful day when you are delivered something unexpected. Or pizza. Always a good day for pizza (except maybe on a lunar eclipse).

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5 COMMENTS

  1. […] This movie burst on the scene in 2009 and knocked just about everybody who saw it on their butt. With its 1980s visual style and pacing, and its seemingly thrown-away title; the moment the first frame of the film lands on your eyeballs, you know you are seeing the work of a true horror genius. […]

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