Review of The House at the End of the Street (2012)

SPOILER ALERT: PLOT POINTS DISCUSSED

Hello all! Same-day post? Yeah, gonna have multiple. As you can clearly tell, I've been quite behind lately. This blogging business is serious...business? Yeah. It really is though. Anywho, my Monday post (the post that's supposed to be for today) is my review of "The House at the End of the Street," starring Jennifer Lawrence, Elisabeth Shue and Max Thieriot.

"The House at the End of the Street" is a psychological thriller film about a teenage girl named Elissa Cassidy (Jennifer Lawrence) who moves to a new neighborhood with her mother Sarah Cassidy (Elisabeth Shue). As they settle in, locals tell them the story of the brutal double murder that happened in the house across the street from theirs, and how the killer was never seen again. The movie follows her as she meets the only surviving member of the family that was killed, the charismatic Ryan Jacobson (Max Thieriot) and gets pulled into his dark and disturbing past.

Pros:

1. Jennifer Lawrence really proves herself to be a versatile actor in this role. After seeing "The Hunger Games," I wasn't sure how well she would fit into a thriller/horror setting. But she did very well; there was not one moment where she looked out of place. Granted, the movie wasn't exactly a horror movie as much as it was just a psychological drama (I'll get to that later), but there was no doubt that she had a commanding performance in this role.

2. Max Thieriot was a great Ryan Jacobson. He was one of the most interesting antagonists I've seen in a while. You don't usually see a lot of young, handsome, charismatic psychos in film, and when you do, they usually fall flat. Not this time, though; He did a great job gaining our trust throughout three quarters of the film. In fact, I was actually rooting for him and Jennifer Lawrence to get together by the end. And then he totally betrays not only J. Law, but the audience as well when he proves to be the one who's psycho. And I didn't feel betrayed in a bad way; more like in an "I'm never trusting nice people again" kind of way. Makes you think twice about people with a mysterious past.

Nice guy or super creep?

3. The plot twist is awesome. The story of the murder is presented like this: Jacobson's little sister Carrie Anne, who was mentally ill, brutally murdered their father and mother, and ran into the woods, never to be seen again. At the time of the murder, Jacobson was living with an aunt. He came back after the murders to fix up the house and sell it, since he inherited it. In reality, Jacobson's little sister died while she was a child, and his parents couldn't handle it. They abused him, physically and mentally, and called him "Carrie Anne." Jacobson eventually killed his parents, but still felt the need for a little sister, a Carrie Anne. So he kidnaps young women and forces them to stay in his house and become his little sister, which he eventually tries to do with Lawrence's character.

Cons:

1. Every night scene in the movie looked like a scene filmed in the day time with a blue filter over the camera. That is a technique that film makers use to make scenes look like night shots, but they just did a plain awful job at it.

2. It was a little too much on the drama side and not enough on the thriller/horror side. I would be less inclined to mention this if it weren't presented as a horror movie. It didn't feel like a horror or a thriller; in fact, it felt more like a made-for-TV psychological drama film. If it would have been a bit more scary, I would have been a lot more engaged.

I think that's it for me. Other than those two points, it was a pretty solid film. Jennifer Lawrence and Max Thieriot make a great team, and they proved it by making the movie as good as it was. Three stars for you, movie! Thanks for reading!