House at the End of the Street

House at the End of the Street Review (Though now that I think of it, there's really no mention to it being the house at the end of the street.)

Strange noises in the woods. How original. (Courtesy of Wired.com)

The Hunger Games, Silver Linings Playbook, and House at the End of the Street: one of these 2012 Jennifer Lawrence films is not like the others. Hint - two are high quality films. Although HATES (as advertised in the film's Twitter campaign) has some originality in its story and twists, the screenplay is subpar, the suspense is minimal, and the carnage is almost non-existent. 

Lawrence plays Elissa Cassidy, a Chicago native who relocates with her single mother Sarah (Elisabeth Shue, of The Karate Kid (1984) and Piranha 3-D). Sarah, who had rather questionable morals in high school, worries Elissa will end up the same way. The audience sees, however, that Elissa is an otherwise down-to-earth teenager, straying away from drunks at a party and looking for the good in others. She has a dark side, though, such as rerouting her home phone to her cell to convince her mother that she's home when she really isn't. But hey, all teenagers have a dark side, don't they?

Ryan Jacobsen (Max Thieriot) doesn't, or so Elissa believes. It's only a few hours after Elissa moves into her cozy new woodsy home that her neighbors inform her about the horrors that took place in Ryan's home. Four years prior, his brain-damaged sister Carrie-Ann murdered their parents, then took off and drowned in a nearby well...but her body was never found! Cue the not-so-erie erie music. 

Since that day, Ryan has lived in his home by himself, with rumors of Carrie-Ann living in the forest having surfaced. On a rainy night, Ryan offers Elissa a ride home. He's polite, but reserved. He sort of has the Edward Cullen persona, though Thieriot fails completely at trying to convey it (Sorry Max). After dropping off Elissa, Ryan goes down to his basement, turns over a rug, opens a latch leading to a floor below, goes down a staircase, follows a long hallway, and goes into the room where Carrie-Ann resides, sedated and stowed away from the world, escaping every so often in an attempt to seemingly repeat her crime. 

The concept of this story is interesting enough, but the screenplay is filled with unoriginal and predictable dialogue. Once the conflict escalates, a surprisingly interesting twist occurs. It owes some credit to Psycho for the rather similar twist, so once I drew a connection between the two, I wasn't as impressed. That doesn't mean that I wasn't impressed, though. I have to say that I was, but not with the movie as a whole.

The suspense wasn't suspenseful, and there wasn't a high body count to keep the gore-lovers entertained. I'm not sure if I would classify this movie as a horror, thriller, suspense, drama or mystery. Pick any one of these genres, and it fails, with the slight exception of mystery. I'm not saying it succeeded at being a mystery. It just didn't fail.

Maybe it's just Jennifer Lawrence's screen presence, but overall the movie wasn't a waste of time for me. I wouldn't recommend it, and I'm nowhere near in a rush to re-watch it, but I wasn't totally disappointed. This is a movie worthy of a rental, but only if you're a fan of the horror genre. There are plenty of solid shocks and scares out there that trump House at the End of the Street.

Rating: 2/5