Horror Without People: THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL

Boy I tells ya, all the recent eclipse business has sure got me thinkin' about horror movies that feature eclipses. It's not a connection everyone would make, obviously, but what can I say? Outside the box is where I live.

Anyway, I started thinking real hard about The House of the Devil. It had been a dog's age (is that a saying?) since I'd last seen it, and it occurred to me that it would be a terrific excuse to bust out a Horror Without People entry...and here we are, that's absolutely everything that's happened in the last 16 or so hours.

Here's the thing, though: The House of the Devil makes for but a mediocre Horror Without People entry! "And you're forging on regardless?" you say, to which I reply "Girl, is this your first time on my site? 'Mediocre' is my bread and oleo!"

In my memories, this film was an overwhelmingly atmospheric, creepy experience owing to dark shadows and long corridors and the such. And it is that kind of experience, but watching it again, I realized it manages this without...well, without much artistry, if that makes sense. Despite the fact that it's largely set in a huge, creepy house, many of the "without people" shots are perfunctory establishing shots rather than moody flourishes. Director Ti West keeps the camera focused mostly on Samantha as she explores the house and it works well. However, it does result in a bit of the ol' "diminishing returns" problem. That's true of every horror film, of course, but in The House of the Devil it's almost that knowing what's coming (or when Sam is actually in peril, or if anything'll happen in the wonderful Walkman sequence, or Megan's fate) really deadens the experience.

But! I still love this movie, even though it did kick off the sort of retro craze in modern horror. (Hopefully It Follows is the peak of it? Sorry man, it's starting to make me cranky. We get it, we all love John Carpenter's Halloween and its iconic score, okay?) So much of it just works and I really appreciate its simplicity: you think the Ulmans are creeps and there's hinky shit going down in their house and there is! Done and done, no fuss no muss. That said, Ti West–who traffics in mood more than anything–could do with some visual pizzazz. (Hmm, I wonder if The Innkeepers fares any better in this regard? It's also been a while since I've seen that, and that's a friggin' haunted house scenario....)

Horror Without People: GOODNIGHT MOMMY

Although I'd rank Goodnight Mommy amongst the best horror films of 2015, I'm still sussing out my thoughts and feelings about it. Damn that last 20 minutes or so–damn them I say! Unpleasant, they were, but not in a "Hey moron, this is a horror movie, don't get upset that you're uncomfortable" way, but rather in a "Oh, this is where we're going?" way. Nearly everything that preceded the third act was so intriguing that when things took a particularly nasty turn into Modern Horror Movie™ territory, it killed my boner a bit.

Regardless of that or my other minor quibbles, however, I was–and remain–enamored with the feel of it. It's very much about whatever good or evil lurks under the everyday façade; obviously this is the entirety of the film's "Is this bandaged woman our mommy or not?" premise but the theme goes further than that, seeping into nearly every deliciously uncanny frame. This beautiful family in a beautiful house nestled amongst beautiful fields and waters–why does it all come across so creepy? What are they all hiding, what are they really thinking, what the hell is going on? The abnormal looks normal approach is nothing new, particularly in horror cinema ("Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut..."), but that doesn't mean I'm not gonna eat up fine filmmaking when I see it, you know?

Horror Without People: THE CHANGELING

Spoiler alert: you are gonna need some industrial-strength oven mitts to handle the extremely hot take I'm about to lay down. And that is: for my money ($0.36), the very best haunted house movies establish a real sense of place. Crazy, right? It should go without saying. But I'm saying it anyway, because saying things that people should already know is one of my favorite pastimes. In related news, pizza: so good!

But look, sure, you can have a successfully interesting and/or frightening supernatural horror film wherein you say a place is haunted and then you just plop some characters any-ol'-where and throw in some ghosts or whatever. (I don't want to brag, but I'm obviously pretty good at pitching stories.) But this is not the case with, say, The Shining or The Haunting, where the Overlook Hotel and Hill House are essential characters in the stories. Would the Torrance family have been as terrorized had they spent the winter at your local Motel 6? Yes, obviously, but for very different reasons: the rotting lady in the bathtub would have been high on krokodil, etc. It's just not the same!

The Changeling (1980) features a grand old haunted house that's rather reminiscent of Hill House. Why, it even comes with a warning, given by a Mrs. Dudley-esque dour, stern-faced matron.

That house is not fit to live in. No one's been able to live in it. It doesn't want people.

But no one ever listens to dour, stern-faced matrons–even though they always know what's up–and so John Russell stays in the sprawling manse. The exterior looms menacingly while inside there are seemingly endless hallways and staircases. Rooms are boarded up and hidden away, and the house is full of secrets. The visual cues in The Changeling are so abundant and the setting is so well-established that the tale is all but told without the need for dialogue.

Horror Without People: MESSIAH OF EVIL

So there's this terrific tumblr (I know, tumblr, right?) called Cinema Without People. The first time I saw it, I was like hey, wow, what a great idea, wish I'd thought of it. But then I thought, hey, wow, didn't Picasso or Shia LeBeouf or whomever say something about stealing? I think so, so why don't I...appropriate the idea sometimes and link back to the dude who thought of it first? Seems fair, particularly since he only posts about horror movies once in a great great while (The Brood is sweet) and generally doesn't indulge in the delightful trash that I sometimes do.

And that's what's up with this idea I didn't think of! I thought it'd be fun to explore it a bit in the context of horror because of the ways in which place can be so important: building tension, establishing a sense of isolation, showing the aftermath of violence, etc.

I thought a good place to start would be the 1973 film Messiah of Evil, which, as you should know by now, I want to take as my unholy bride because I adore it to no end. The empty streets of Point Dume, the surrealistic art in the beach house, the beach itself...all of it imbues the movie with a desolate, ominous feeling. Even bright, familiar places like an innocuous grocery store have entered the realm of the uncanny–something really ain't right in Point Dume. Pray you can escape, because no one will hear you SCREAM!