There is no question, after viewing the above and "Amusement" in the same week, that this was Trash Week. Yesterday, girls, on my day off, found me with some free time--enough to see a movie. So I decided to saunter over to the Alpine, and take in something, and I chose "The House At The End Of The Street." In one way it was genuinely satisfying; there I was back again in the Alpine, just like in my distanced youth, or at least when I was a good deal younger, seeing a trash horror film. (I had to go alone, becaue Monseiur will not waste his time on thiis kind of film!!!!!!! ) Some things never change!!!!!!!!!!!!
As for this movie, oh, my God, you have to see it to believe it. While not as bad as "Amusement,"--it at least had some cohesiveness to it--it was nevertheless indecisive about where it wanted to go.
Let's start with Jennifer Lawrence and Elisabeth Shue as mother and daughter. Two women in search of careers. As one wag said, one Twinkie more and Lawrence is pushed over into Fatland. Miss Shue has worked her way up from butching it as a town sheriff battling cute little piranhas, to coping with neighborhood psychos. She and her daughter rent this chalet like house in Connecticut, near some woods, next door to a deserted house where, several years before, a 13-year-old girl murdered her parents.
There are no credits; the murder is the first thing seen, and it is done in that shaky editing and lighting manner that wants to convey all kinds of ambiguity, and leave the viewer asking questions. The other question to be asked is how Shue's character, a Medical Assistant at a local hospital, can afford to rent a home like this, on her salary????????
Before long, lights are discovered in the house next door, which is not deserted after all. The murderess, Carrie Anne Jacobson, was never apprehended, but was said to have run off into the woods, and either drowned in the river, or is still running about, like Jason Voorhees. The mysterious resident is the Jacobsons' surviving son, Ryan, who, at age 7, was sent away to live with an aunt. She died, and he came home.
Except Ryan, with whom Elissa (Lawrence's character) strikes up a romance, is not quite what he seems. Or is he????????? I will say this much--a little more than halfway through I figured it was he who had killed his parents; what I did not get till the end was the motive, and that, as far as I am concerned, it was justifiable homicide. But the movie plays around with viewers. It wants you to think that Carrie Anne survived, and Ryan is caring for her in a isolated room in a basement. He initially tells Elissa she was injured in a swing accident; when she came to, she was brain damaged and violent. He could not see her sent away, so he is taking care of her. Which would have been fine, and if the movie had just been Carrie Anne running around in her nightgown and slippers, bumping off people--the townies are shown to be rotten suburbanites--it would have been satisfying. But then the filmmakers begin pulling multiple plot twists faster than a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat!!!!!!!!!!!!
The horror in this film is not so much supernatural, as it is family evil and its effects upon children. Never gory or campy, yet still managing to be unsatisfying, "The House At The End Of The Street" has its moments. But the biggest question the film asks has nothing to do with its plot.
It is what will Elisabeth Shue's next project be????????????????????
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