House of Screaming Glass

"House of Screaming Glass" (which is a cool name, even if it has no relation to the actual film) had potential to be a creepy little horror film but is undone by really bad pacing and editing, and as a result is much too long and confusing to really have impact.

The movie begins with Elizabeth Cadozia (played by Lani Call) letting us know that she has just turned 27, her mother has just died, her grandmother left her an old schoolhouse, and she is now driving to live there. And we have our first confusion -- why is she going to "live" in a schoolhouse? Why does she get the inheritance from the grandmother when her mother dies (and she is very clear -- the grandmother left the house to HER, not her mother). She gets to the schoolhouse and when she gets there, she discovers that her grandmother was either a witch or perhaps some sort of patron of the dark arts, and in addition, she herself is either going crazy or haunted or possessed or something, because weird things seem to keep happening to her...

Although there are some pretty creepy and disturbing sequences and Call (who is literally the only character in the movie, all the dialog is just her voice overs) gives a bravura performance, "House of Screaming Glass" is fatally damaged by horrid pacing and editing. Scenes seem to go on forever and then are followed by sequences that don't flow from the previous one, and as a result the movie is way too long and doesn't seem to have any sort of narrative flow. For example, there is one scene where Elizabeth is sitting at a piano at night playing poorly (lots of wrong notes and chords). She sits there playing for a very, very long time and then she thinks she hears something. She gets up and spends another long amount of time walking around the house. Then something happens, and we immediately cut to the next afternoon (I assume it's the next day, but who knows?) and Elizabeth is now in a room we never saw before and she starts to look at a couple of trunks, with the events of what I assume is the previous night completely ignored. So many scenes just go on too long; she spends long, tedious scenes walking around, turning the pages in books, looking over the edge of a bridge...

There are definitely sequences that are creepy and disturbing and there was a mystery to unravel. I was trying to figure out how much of this movie could be cut out to make it leaner and meaner, and I think you could easily cut a good 20 minutes and make this a tight and disturbing little film. Unfortunately, because of the poor pacing and editing, it was impossible to get engaged in the movie and a movie like this -- which is not going to answer questions and requires attention -- will suffer irreparably if viewers are watching and repeatedly thinking, "Man, this is dragging... will this scene ever end?" I definitely sense a good movie here, but it needs another editor to make a strong run at it.

A movie about one person who wanders about in the same building for an entire feature could be potentially boring. In a way this wastes no time being boring, but I don't mean to totally dismiss it.

The film's central character rarely talks, mostly in stilted voice over that wants to be as good as that in Let's Scare Jessica to Death, and rarely changes expression.

The film is deliberately slow moving, with very little editing, I swear there are several shots in this movie that must last 5 minutes and feel like much more. There is some virtue in this as far as creating tension and suspense as you wait, even hope, for something to happen. The sound design for the film is good, working hard to inject menace and life into the smallest little details.

I have to think they were going for a David Lynch arthouse dread here, but it's just too slow and no offense, not too wel cast or acted, not horribly so, but when you basically have only one person in the whole movie you need a miraculous performance.

The material is some Lovecraftian "stuff" a central book that eventually, everything in this movie seems like eventually something will happen, is just a rip off of Evil Deads' book of the dead. Which is a let down, the film isn't doing the same old schlockly thing you expect and going instead for a Lynch foreign film regional one-offness that it at times almost achieves. But by the time you reach the halfway point and the pace just gets slower and slower, it's a fail.

I think if you held your breath during the long static shots in the movie you'd probably die from lack of oxygen, it's that slow.

It all leads to exactly where you might think, there is a scene where I think the lead girl is being pleasured by her dead grandmother monster. I think. I don't think that's been in a movie before.

No nudiy or violence, just once-in-a-while effective weirdness if only it at least built slowly rather than just repeating the same ideas in the slowest way possible.

Following her mother's death, a woman finds that she's inherited a run-down schoolhouse and moves in, but the longer she stays there the more her discovery of her ancestor' s work in the occult and other demonic happenings keep forcing her into a similar path of witchery.

This was a massively disappointing feature without much going for it. The absolutely dreadful pacing here that takes everything so slowly is absolutely unbearably by design with the way it's set up from the very beginning but that doesn't make this any more intriguing to see play out. The endless droning shots taking forever to get across the landscape, following her just walking around the building, or reading through the books left behind which signals the start of her journey.means that nothing happens very slowly for much of the running time. Keeping her isolated as the only character means a draining, lifeless narration that matches the plodding material so it's lifeless energy is taxing in pretty much regard which is going to be a struggle for those not interested in this kind of story and presentation. When the film changes things up and decides to inject some genre elements into the mix, it's decent enough fare. Featuring some genuinely chilling material with the idea of blurry, unidentifiable figures in the background watching her unaware of what's going on, this has a lot to like before it starts to showcase the effects of her presence there awakening the discovery of witchcraft and the occult through the photographic evidence left behind as well as the increasingly bizarre and outlandish hallucinations that accompany everything.she uncovers which features some strikingly vibrant visuals alongside the chilling concepts. It's just all done so slowly and at such a lethargic tempo it's hard to feel invested or scared by them since the energy is drained out by the time it moves to the next one.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence and pictures with Full Nudity.