House by the Lake

Its the rather (too) common structure ..

• struggling couple .. with the wife being a kind of nagging, older type
• hot and younger woman to complete the triangle
• some creepy guy
• creepy kid

While there is some sort of a chemistry between the mother and father, the (supposed) chemistry to the teacher/babysitter feels forced and anything but realistic. The relationship to the child is non existent... as a matter of fact it is completely unrealistic how the child can function at all .. or how the adults around it can be so oblivious and irrational not to act accordingly.

The setting of the house as a healing process seems to be silly as it obviously does not work at all, nor do the man and woman put any active effort into making it work.

The father is irrational beyond the point of being extremely annoying, the mother ... despite not having any reasonable connection to the daughter .. seems to consider her to be of utmost importance.

On the technical side, there is some "slight" shaky cam .. which i do not like at all .. as it does not add anything.

The acting is cheesy and on the level of a south american telenovela (overdramatic and overacted) .. also, there seems to be very little actual story in the film. It felt more like one of the worse episodes of X-files featuring the "monster of the week" .. in times when the show seemed to have a very low budget.

So why does it still have 3/10 for me? .. well, there are worse movies out there .. but this one certainly adds to the list of very boring and stereotypical ones.

Not recommended at all.

Where it takes some ideas and presents them in an interesting way, nothing is done with them. The framing and shot composition was perhaps the most disappointing as they felt very disconnected from the story and scene overall; it was as if someone said "hey what if we shot it from that angle? That would be cRaZy and that would mean it's artistic." The acting was at times strong and at others fairly forced and unnatural. It did not really pass my test of "could I actually picture real people talking like this?" more often than not.

The finale was also so very underwhelming, all that build up for almost nothing. Granted it's a short movie, but barely anything happens and there's little to no real scares throughout.

Terrible story telling,strained acting,has to be one of the worst horror movies ever! No sense of story in the movie and the audience doesn't feel connected to any of the characters...nor is there is any logical conclusion to what the movie was all about! Such a waste of time

What is really horrifying about this movie is that it has been produced such as it is! What's up with Gwen? Is she flirting with Scott or just being naive? What is her agenda with the Morgans? Who/What is the fish man? Is it real (well water marks around the house are real..) or is it just the pedophile next door in disguise? And I could go on and on... There are so many loose ends, so many chances to make it a good horror/thriller movie wasted.

I second the previous review, good acting for James Callis and good music score.

Amateur Film. The little girl seems like the only one who took acting lessens. Very long drawn out movie that has no Horror in it. Most of the Film shows the Mother rolling her eyes at the young and pretty nanny and the husband trying to some from somebody. The rest of the movie is about running around the house looking for the little girl. The end is supposed to be the cherry on top. Ends up being poop on the bottom of your shoe. Bad, bad, bad