House of Good and Evil

This film is a complete failure in every respect, if you waste your time watching it you will wish you hadn't.

I am a big horror fan so I was disappointed to find out there is absolutely no scares in this film whatsoever. The script is appalling, the storyline is a joke, the soundtrack is hopeless, the 'special effects' are joke shop quality and I honestly can't think of any redeeming features this film has.

There are several parts where the music builds up and up as if something scary is coming....but nothing happens!

I made the mistake of watching this film because some of the other reviewers seem to think it is worth watching and I feel conned-I honestly do. This is not the sort of film that could divide opinion in any way, it is just really, really bad and I cannot understand how anyone would honestly say otherwise.

You have been warned.

This is one of those films that makes you say "what?" to the television a lot, partly because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense at times and partly because the sound levels are sometimes inconsistent. You might have to keep fiddling with the volume to follow some of the mumble shots without getting overwhelmed by the background music used to let you know that something suspenseful must have happened. I was often left guessing about that. There's one particular scene in which the trees apparently make rumbling noises of some sort, and the music lets you know that that's very, very scary, whatever it is.

My fiancée fell asleep about 10 minutes into it, which tells you something about the degree to which it merits being included in the "thriller" category. I can sit through almost anything, but I did look it up on IMDb for a bit since there wasn't much going on on the screen. This one would be a hard one to get through in a theater.

It picks up a little bit in the middle, but I can't say there's much reason to stick it out. I suspect that whatever festival buzz it got is because it's sort of about wife abuse, though it's not totally clear what it's trying to say about it, other than that it's bad. Some of the acting is OK.

The firefighter Chris Conley (Christian Oliver) buys an isolated old house in the middle of nowhere with neither telephone nor electricity and moves with his estranged wife Maggie (Rachel Marie Lewis) expecting to save their marriage and restart a new life. A few months ago, Maggie was pregnant and lost her baby of eight months when Chris pushed her during an argument. The real estate agent Rob Bradley (Rob Neukirch) explains that the house is split in two and Maggie and Chris will need to share the space with the tenants Mr. and Mrs. Anderson (Jordan Rhodes and Marietta Marich) for at least one more month when the old couple will leave the house.

Chris finds a job in the nearest town and leaves the unstable Maggie alone to unpack and decorate the house. Maggie overhears a telephone and weird noises in the house and soon she meets Mrs. Anderson and learns that Mr. Anderson is an abusive husband like she believes Chris is.

"House of Good and Evil" is a low-budget movie showing the process of madness developed in slow pace and a predictable conclusion. The development of the relationship between Maggie and Chris in the beginning is weak and the madness process of Maggie is obvious. The story takes place in the present days and it is weird that an urban couple moves to a decrepit house without the modern facilities – electric power, telephone, Internet and gas - to begin a new life with the husband needing to travel and leave his wife alone. Last but not the least, I had great expectations with this movie since it has been recommended by a friend of mine and probably it increased my deception. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

From the movie poster / movie cover and the story summary, then I had initially expected something entirely different from this movie compared to what it turned out to be.

That being said, then this movie was a snoozefest. Wow, it just dragged on and on forever with a horribly bad storyline. Nothing scary happened throughout the entire course of the movie, and it is only the last 5 minutes of the movie or so that really are of any importance. I will say that director David Mun did manage to pull off the ending quite nicely. However, the rest of the movie, not so much.

The story is about a couple who lost a child during pregnancy while being stuck in traffic in the city. Some time later, they move to a remote countryside, far, far away from any town. The house is grand and seems almost too good to be true. But the idyllic setting soon turns to horror.

As well-intended as the storyline might have been, then it failed on almost every account to accomplish much of anything. And the most scary parts about the movie was the music score, or the fact how utterly dull and slow-paced this movie was.

It should be said that the acting was actually good enough, but the actors and actresses just had next to nothing script-wise to work with.

If you enjoy horrors and thrillers, then there are far better movies out there to sit down and watch.

There have been some very positive reviews written here on the House of Good and Evil. I'm really wondering were they watching the same movie or merely part of the production crew. I watched the movie off the back of these reviews and any score over 5 on IMDb is in my opinion worth a try. All this I unfortunately found misleading. This psychological thriller is low on thrills and even less on horror. It was a tall order for the lead actress who is in just about every shot in the movie and I can't say I warmed to the character, who was a difficult character anyway must to the chagrin of my girlfriend who also watched eyes rolling regularly. The rest of the cast were not bad, the old lady was excellent, however there was not too much to go on. As the story panned out to the end I was disappointed to find a twist similar to a British movie I watched but days ago, and it was done better in that movie. I'm afraid it just didn't all add up in the House of Good and Evil and I still don't see the relevance of the name.