House of Darkness

I would love to know the age of people who rate this film as a 1 or 2 and say comments like 'Skip it' or 'boring waste of time.' Maybe these people need to stay off their phones while watching a conversation-led film.

I live in the UK, do not work in the industry, have zilch to do with the film or trying to promote it. However, after giving it a go, regardless of the poor reviews, I thought it was really good, in fact its maybe a 7.5.

You can sort of sense from the early dialogue what path the film might take but what kept me gripped was the mystery of wondering how we were going to get there. I found the dialogue excellent. It was intriguing and the exchanges between the main characters made me drawn into the room with them.

This is not a gorefest from minute one, nor is it a bloodbath but its highly sexually charged, with dark undertones that permeate the film from very early on. The acting is top notch as well.

We're introduced to a couple who have literally just met earlier, in a bar, and the male character Hap has given Mina a lift home. They seem to like each other, and thus the dialogue/wordplay begins.

For me, it was absolutely fascinating to watch, i was riveted. Saying that, I did watch it in the dark, no interruptions, and I had headphones on and it just ramped up the creepy atmosphere.

And this film does build up. Its like a coil thats getting tighter and tighter, and even tho you 'know' whats going to happen, you still need to watch.

My only criticism would be that, after all that tension and impending doom, the end seemed to peter out a little maybe, and it ended too quickly. But, saying that, I thoroughly enjoyed it and providing you're not an impatient child, and you can listen to dialogue , and read between the lines, then hopefully you'll find it as enjoyable as I did.

The film gave me hope with its beginning. But was a let down by the time it ended. Justin Long really uplifts this film with his acting but the lack of chemistry amongst the other actors, and zero depth in the script made it impossible to like this film.

There were moments like some conversations between the characters which reflected a proper writing but it fell off in the rest of the film. Couple of jumpscares does the job well but that's it. For a moment it does take an interesting turn but then just leaves that part hanging which could have made this film a bit more interesting.

The ending seemed forced. It would've worked if it was a short film.

Justin Long plays a dorky guy who drives the sassy Kate Bosworth home to maybe get frisky in her big old spooky house.

The rest of the movie is a real time (yes, really) conversation that drags on and on. The extensive dialogue is cluttered, swamped with umms and ahhs and throwaway lines that the cheapest editor on Fiverr would have jettisoned immediately.

The cinematography is poor. Actors often have their eyes in shadow which subtracts from their otherwise decent performances. There is only one location, a living room, and most of the time we can barely see it. They took the title literally, it seems. Don't expect the house to play any role. It doesn't.

It's a very basic movie, essentially a one act radio play. A cliched thirty second denouement is telegraphed hard and then it's over. I can't even tell you what this movie is about because it only has one idea and it would spoil the whole thing. As a five minutes short, it would be respectable. As a movie, it's a toothless waste of time.

It must be tedious to write movies like this one: the ending is obvious from the premises, so the remaining time must be filled by characters' development.

Unfortunately, the evil one (Long) is not evil at all, and the heroines (the vampires) are not heroic. Instead, they all share bad lines.

After 90' of watching, one gets the long predicted ending - and there could have been an interesting plot twist: e.g. The victim could have proved himself as a vampire hunter and kill the monsters...but this is simply forbidden in Hollywoke.

More, if the movie had not involved a male dismemberment, it would never be done.

So pathetic.

We just tried to watch this movie. Whoever wrote this dialog clearly has never interacted with real humans. 20 minutes in and Justin Long's character was so unlikeable with the ceaseless rambling that we gave up. There was zero action or anything compelling to hook someone in. This would probably be suited best as a low budget play instead of a movie. The preview to the film was intriguing but if you can't hook an audience in the first 20 min of an hour and a half film the entire script needs to be rewritten. Overall I will give this a one star for the reimagining premise but sadly cannot give it any more than that.