The House of Violent Desire

This movie gets worse by the minute, but if you happen to like nicely framed shots and unusual lighting, you may want to watch. The plot begins fairly decently, but transgresses into pure silliness about an hour in, the whole time seeming like a lengthy episode of DARK SHADOWS from the 1960s--a show I watched as a child. 2 stars for good filming techniques.

You will have to see a lot of movies before you see one that is as badly acted as this one. All of the cast, and I do mean every last one of them are comedically bad and laughably awful. I don't entirely think it is all their fault. That is because the script is the worst since cavemen drew on walls.

The film is a basic haunted house horror romp that, to be fair to it, has some decently scary scenes that never pay off because of what laughable nonsense follows it.

It is difficult to know whether or not the production is hamstrung by the lack of money or the lack of talent. I am going to go out on a limb and say it is both. Avoid.

When I first started watching the film, I wondered why the rating was so low. It's shot well, the location is gorgeous, and it overall has potential, but the film, and the acting gets worse the longer it goes on. Until you fully understand why the rating is so low.

What started off interesting, and turns into complete dribble. Like 2 of the actors can actually act, the rest is like over the top pantomime acting, with cheesy lines to suit. The atmosphere it started off really good, and then it just all gets ruined. The villians are cartoon type villians.

I was really disappointed by the film, and I thought it had way too much of the fettish S&M stuff going on, and it was part of the reason this film out stayed it's welcome with a 2hr run time.

My God What is this film ?. A movie without music will be a piece of nothing. music is present in every part, in order to cover the overall weakness Bad performance. A meaningless story. Boring. The only acceptable thing is the place.

Arriving at a remote mansion in the countryside, a woman hired to be a new maid for a mysterious family begins to witness the psychological unraveling that emerges once they welcome a stranger in the middle of a tense battle of sexual battle of wills within the household setting off a fierce battle to survive.

Overall, this was a standout Gothic-horror-style throwback. That it plays so well with these elements in a great manner offers the majority of the fun with this one where it runs through the style and tropes of the genre in fine fashion. The idea of the outsider arriving at a remote mansion featuring a mysterious family with mounds of secrets within them is the type of glorious setup that plays homage to the greats of the genre as the more things are unraveled and revealed the more it opens up the different elements deeper under the surface. With the secret rooms off-limits to others, a mysterious accident that claimed a life in the not-so-distant past, and a cryptic stranger looking to stir hidden feelings with repressed urges, this one works incredibly well at harboring that slow-burning tempo so crucial to the genre. On top of that, once the secrets start being revealed and the tension within the house gets turned up, the film becomes far more intriguing with how everything gets brought about. The search for the missing father and how that leads to the missing items, the desire to look into the closed-off attic that provides the clues about the ghostly visions within, and the arrival of the stranger who starts to instigate upheaval within the established couples all force this one along into the type of required tropes within the genre that move this along quite smoothly. These all lead together into a gloriously twisted and frantic finale where the devilish actions take place as the various forces here come to take revenge in their own means which provide some macabre moments through it all. The other really impressive aspect of this one comes from the stellar use of the influx of sexual content within here to prove their madness and insanity. As the situation grows darker and more depraved, the idea of how the different scenarios get brought up as the use of tempting each other with the reality of carnal desires strikes a major chord in the middle section here. Despite not being overly graphic about what's going on, the use of being open and frank with the sexuality at play where it deals with intriguing BDSM-type relationships or other types of relationships that take on a different air than expected with how they tackle the setup featured here in the final stages where this plays a major part in the action featured throughout here. All told, these all give the film quite a lot to like as while there isn't much to dislike here there are some drawbacks to be had. The main factor with the film is the excessively long running time that drags this one out far longer than it should be. It's far too long for its own good with several plotlines that really could've been told at a brisker pace, with the siblings trying to convince themselves something's going on or the numerous conversations about the nature of pleasures being the main ones which leave the running time more than it needs to be. It causes the maid to disappear from the middle of the film entirely despite being presented as the main character due to this bizarre treatment, and the series of revelations that come about are oftentimes way too much to take seriously as it all could've been taken down somewhat slightly. These are the few factors that hold it back.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence, Nudity, and sexual content.