Review - House On The End Of The Street

House On The End Of The Street

Year – 2012

Directed by - Mark Tonderai

Starring - Jennifer Lawrence, Elisabeth Shue, and Max Thieriot

 PLOT- A mother and daughter move to a new town and find themselves living next door to a house where a young girl murdered her parents. When the daughter befriends the surviving son, she learns the story is far from over.

LOWDOWN - Today is the last weekend in a while that I'm not going to be crazy busy. Between my sister getting married this up coming month, and my new job at a local haunt for the season, I decided in great autumn tradition to go see a scary movie to start getting into the whole Halloween mood.

I had vaguely heard about House On The End Of The Street, and at first honestly thought it was another remake being cranked out. But no, this was an original idea with a title that honors some really great thrillers that were made in the 1970's and 1980's (Last House On The Left, Last House On Dead End Street, House On The Edge Of The Park, House By The Cemetery, ect.) Going into this movie with no prior knowledge besides knowing it was ratted PG-13, I went into it with an open mind.

I was not disappointed. At first I was sorta blah going into the theater. Some lady brought her two year in who kept babbling through the trailers. I'm sorry, maybe it's because I work with children, but I can't deal with people bringing their babies to the movies when it isn't a kid's movie. Unless you're child is perfectly behaved and knows how to shut up and sit still for two hours...DON'T FUCKING BRING THEM! Shocking enough besides a few cries, the kid pretty much shut up the whole movie.

The movie itself started off at a pretty slow pace, a lot of people have complained it was boring and I'll admit it did have a slow start and really didn't savor it's time with truly developing the characters. Yet I've seen a million PG-13 horror films (mostly of them released after the whole Ring and Grudge wave) and most of them were awful. These weren't classic PG-13 horror movies that we all watched as kids...PG-13 films that really should have been ratted R, no most of these just sucked. Believe it or not House is one of the new that I really enjoyed and stood out. There's a love story that believe it or not doesn't feel forced, a lead that sorta echos you're typical final girl from the mid 1980's, and a pretty good storyline that kept me guessing. Yes it did have a few “jump” scares, but as the film began to close and sorta began to guess where it was going and wasn't disappointed that I was pretty close with how I thought it would end. There were several clever twists and the way the movie was done I think it pulled it off perfectly. The last twenty minutes are very suspenseful and I gotta admit, the very last scene rang true to a certain classic (Sleepaway Camp) and I loved the fast paced music that blasted over the credits. If you're looking for what seems like a Lifetime movie on coke, or one of the better PG-13 thrillers, go check out this gem, you won't be disappointed!