House of Darkness

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.

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.

I really enjoyed this actually! Justin Long and Kate Bosworth are some seriously good actors. They really put on a show! I understand there was a ton of conversation and it's pretty fair to say this was incredibly slow. I can understand that. But sometimes slow is good. This held pretty solid build up and while it was predictable I also considered this to be a classic long stretch of tales from the crypt type of story. So I really enjoyed the aspect of that and couldn't wait to see what was going to happen. Even if I knew there was clearly something off about Mina you still don't know exactly what it may be! The ending was great and a classic! The acting was also incredibly good as expected.

I haven't really seen a horror movie like this before. It's a small cast and dialog driven. The type that could be a stage play. The writing could have been a bit better, but the acting makes up for it. Would love to see more horror movies like this!

It's in a similar vein to Big Kahuna. Justin Long and Kate Bosworth do fantastic jobs as always. The other 2 actresses I didn't recognize, but they delivered as well. Suspense is steadily built in masterful ways that keep you ready for the shoe to drop at any moment, or possibly not at all!

I'm not sure why people seemed to dislike this so much. I almost wanted to give it a 10 just to counter the unreasonable hate, but in the end I had to grade it where it was.

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.