Our House (2018)


REVIEWER RATING: 
5/10




Our House comes to us from first time feature film director Anthony Scott Burns, who until now worked on short films and segments in anthologies like Darknet and Holidays. The movie focuses on a young college student named "Ethan" and his small team of peers, as they work on a machine that would hopefully offer wireless electricity. Unfortunately, as things with the machine start to pick up, Ethan's parents suddenly die, leaving him to quit school and take care of his two younger siblings. 

Time passes and just as things become routine, Ethan gets the urge to mess with that pesky machine again, not realizing that the thing actually works, just not as intended. It turns out that each time the machine comes on he's basically opening a passage into another realm--a spirit realm. Before they know it, the little sister is talking to a new "imaginary friend" and the troublesome younger brother thinks he's communicating with his parents again; in other words, the movie basically turns into your typical haunted house flick.



I really wanted to like this movie since I liked the concept of a man-made machine inadvertently offering a way for spirits to come to our side and the characters are surprisingly well written and likable, which is something you rarely see in the genre. You feel for the plight that our lead Ethan is in and how he and his younger siblings are forced to cope with the sudden loss of their parents. You want everyone in the family to live long, healthy and happy lives, but of course this is a horror movie, so things don't quite work out that way.

While things started out promising, the writing slowly (and I mean SLOWLY) gets worse as it goes on, ultimately leading to your typical haunted house fair. And next to the writing, the biggest flaw in the film is the pacing, where barely anything happens until the final act. At that point the spirits finally decide to make themselves violently known to the family in the form of these black smokey-looking silhouettes, but by then it was a little too late, in my opinion.

OVERALL: 
What started out as a promising and semi-creative horror film (very) slowly turns into your typical haunted house flick. I'd say that if it's streaming somewhere it's an okay watch, but don't expect much to happen until the final act and even then it's nothing you likely haven't already seen.


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