About a third of the way through the unnecessarily plodding final act of The House at the End of the Street, a woman careened furiously down the stairs to the right of me, and aggressively hurled herself at the back of someone else’s chair in a row in the front. Her attempts at a Ray Lewis tackle prompted the victim to call the police, who returned to the theatre with some official man in a suit, resembling in my darkness-induced stupor the egregiously awesome Psy of Gangnum Style fame. As they tried to ascertain which woman had leapt from the shadows like a puma in heat, I realized that this entire affair was far more engaging than what was onscreen in front of me.
The writers of this movie, David Loucka and Jonathan Mostow, are no strangers to the genre, dealing heavy-handed references left and right – that one scene where the girl is tied to a chair in the basement, that moment when a dark lurking figure rushes in front of the path of the camera. But with all of this knowledge comes great responsibility, and dealing with a post-Scream audience that is as privy, if not more so, to the ins and out of the typical horror film, these guys come up short in every way.
Jennifer Lawrence makes valiant efforts to save this schlock ship from sinking, capably filling the role of clever, savvy teen. The only thing missing was a bow and arrow. As she and her mother (the imperceptibly attractive Elisabeth Shue) attempt to restructure their lives with a new home in a new place, they realize that all the things the neighbors have been saying about the house next door may actually be true.
Romances in teen horror films – and I use that terminology loosely to refer to the unfortunate heap that are rated PG-13 and can thus show no excessive gore or skimpiness – follow rules similar to the ways in which people address addictions. First comes denial, then acceptance, and finally preventative measures to alleviate said addiction. When Elissa (Lawrence) meets looming, loner neighbor Ryan Jacobson (with the steely blue dreamsicle eyes of Paul Ryan), she can’t believe what the nosy, privileged neighbors are saying about him. Having lived in his abandoned house in the shadow of a terrible tragedy involving his sister Carrie-Ann taking a hammer to his parents’ heads, Ryan has been castigated to a hermetic life of community college pre-med and general aloofness. After denying that the rumors about him are true, Lawrence comes to fall for said dreamy, but dreary hunk, defending him against her own mother’s invasiveness. She basically tells the two of them not to do the nasty, as they chat over fennel and oven-roasted chicken.
Finally when the levee breaks, in an all too readable Shyamalan twist, Elissa faces the brunt of the addiction head-on. Tiptoeing around massive spoilers, I’ll say there’s an obligatory showdown in The House at the End of the Street.
There is a marriage of somewhat perceptive dialogue writing and horribly ill-executed directing in this movie. It’s very difficult to write words for teenagers to say and the results are often mortifying when writers try. But when Elissa’s friend describes central douchebag Tyler as a “dickhole” as opposed to a “dick,” it conjured laughs, if only to revel in the creation of compound expletives. Yet during other moments in HATES (an acronym I did not create), it’s hard to tell if the filmmakers were employing obvious techniques baiting the audience into calling them out for it, or if they actually thought these methods were innovative. The scene that called this conundrum into question the most is when Elissa and her mom are being welcomed into the piranha pool that is their new neighborhood. As they sit with all the griping gossipers around a circular piece of Ikea patio furniture, the camera wheels around in a frenzy to each of their faces as they speak – you know for us to realize this is an important, suspenseful scene.
Nitpickiness aside, HATES is too tame to be a gross-out shock-fest, and far too predictable to be a creepy teenage thriller. As it skipped along, fumbling on sea legs like a newborn deer, it seemed at war with itself to find the right path upon which to travel. Sort of like the war between my two bickering theater buddies. There I go again.