One of the signal images of the ‘80s was the attractive young woman, clutching a kitchen knife as she slowly steps into a dark room of horror. The House of the Devil revisits those years in a story about a cute college girl, Samantha (Jocelin Donahue), who reluctantly accepts a babysitting job from a rather odd older gentleman (Tom Noonan), only to find herself caught in cultic rituals on the night of a lunar eclipse.
Writer-director Ti West sets The House of the Devil (out Feb. 2 on Blu-ray and DVD) in a decade when the tabloids were filled with stories of Satanic rings, snatching children and conducting unhallowed rites. The first two-thirds of his film (the best part) is quiet and somber, filmed with unhurried takes in the rhythm of watching. Gradually, The House of the Devil grows tense with expectation before... Well, alas, the shower of fake blood is the movie’s least interesting aspect.
What’s good about West’s production for anyone who was young in the early ‘80s is how period details are incorporated into the setting without fanfare—Samantha’s Walkman with her new wave cassettes, the overall look of campus life without cell phones, iPods or the Internet. It looks like such a leisurely age of innocence, despite all those Satanic cults lurking in the shadows.
