31 Days Of Horror (Day 6 ) – Wrong House (2012)/ The Lodge (2008)

Things go bump in the night, others will devour your soul, some will slice, dice eat your heart with a nice glass of Chianti. October has now arrived which can mean only one thing 31 Days of Horror has now arrived again. For the next 31 days, we will dive deep into the catacombs of horror to pick you a movie. Every day will be different ranging from the classics to the weird and wonderful. Many you might have heard of, some will be new to you. There will be personal favourites that you may like, others you may hate but they all will unleash those emotions that make us love horror.

Day 6 is back to Sandra Harris Cinehouse co-editor who gives us 2 for one movies Wrong House and The Lodge. Mute girls in homes you can’t  leave and a short break nightmare for one couple.

THE WRONG HOUSE aka HOUSE-HUNTING. (2012) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ERIC HURT. STARRING MARC SINGER, ART LA FLEUR, HAYLEY DUMOND, VICTORIA VANCE, PAUL MCGILL, JANEY GIOIOSA AND REBEKAH KENNEDY.

THE LODGE. (2008) DIRECTED BY BRAD HELMINK AND JOHN RAUSCHELBACH. WRITTEN BY DEB HAVENER. STARRING KEVIN MCCLATCHY, ELIZABETH KELL, OWEN SZABO AND MANDY KREISHER.

I picked up these two little horror finds at my local music/DVD store recently and made a night of watching them back-to-back. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience but, like George Washington, I cannot tell a lie. THE WRONG HOUSE is a million times better than THE LODGE, which I think we’ll start with.

It’s kind of a typical run-of-the-mill dopey-young-couple-holidaying-in-a-creepy-cabin-in-the-woods type of film, and I must admit that I wasn’t crazy about the couple involved, which makes it harder to properly engage with the film. Julia and Michael don’t seem to have that good of a relationship.

Michael, a dope-smoking Little Rich Boy with a wealthy Pops, seems to love Julia, at least, and he’s hoping to use the weekend away at an isolated mountain lodge as a chance to pop a certain question. He’s got the little box and everything.

Julia doesn’t seem to care about Michael too much, though, judging by the number of times she tries to get out of having sex with him. And surely a surfeit of sleazy vacation sex is the main reason for a young couple heading for the hills for a couple of days? But he’s a doped-up twat, so I can’t say that I blame her too much for that.

The titular Lodge is nice and spacious and comfortable enough, but how come the seriously uptight owner is hanging around the place like a bad smell instead of leaving the young ‘uns to their own devices as they’d- not unnaturally- been expecting? Henry is a decidedly odd fish but, to add fuel to an already over-stoked fire, there’s a shadow at the window and I think it wants to come in…

This is a pretty violent film, and there’s some sexual violence in there as well, deservedly earning the film its 18s rating. I could have completely done without the addition (more like tacking on) of a fourth person into the mix, however.

It took away some of the film’s believability and it looks like it was added because what’s a movie nowadays without a creepy mute of a long-haired girl in it, standing there in the corner like a spare part with her bedraggled barnet obscuring her mopey face? Bit of a spoiler there but I just had to get that off my chest…!

Believe it or not, and I’m sure you can easily believe it, there’s a creepy mute of a long-haired girl in THE WRONG HOUSE too, but there’s a perfectly satisfying reason for her not talking. Yes, it’s annoying that she’s there at all but in this case she’s serving a purpose.

Meh. I’m getting really tired of the creepy-mute-girl trope. Can’t they ever mix it up a bit? Have an overweight middle-aged garage mechanic or lollipop lady (or even a sarcastic hippopotamus wearing glasses and carrying a briefcase) standing in a corner blindly staring at nothing instead of a long-haired girl? Just for a bleedin’ change, you know…

THE WRONG HOUSE is also known as HOUSE-HUNTING. Two families, the Hays family and the Thomsons, each turn up at a remote countryside farmhouse at which they think is an Open Day, designed to let prospective buyers check the place over with a view to buying it.

Both the Hays family and the Thomsons absolutely love the place. And the house must really, really like them too, because when it’s time for them to go home, it won’t let them leave. All their attempts to go home leave them right back where they started, back at the house. The house has an evil purpose in mind. It’s called revenge, and it’s going to drive the two families clean out of their minds…

The two Dads, Marc Singer as Charlie Hays and Art LaFleur as Don Thomson, are absolutely excellent as the two alpha males who desperately try to hold their families together while the house closes in around all of them like a ghastly inescapable fog that holds evil within it, terrible evil.

Victoria Vance as the domesticated Thomson Mom Leslie is wonderful in her moving portrayal of a woman who’s tragically lost a child and can easily be pushed over the edge of sanity because of it. The three young ‘uns (including Mopey Girl) I disliked intensely. What horrible bloody kids…!

The tension is ramped-up again and again as the families turn on each other and tear strips off each other, much to the delight, one would imagine, of the watching house. The house is always watching, by the way.

Watching and waiting. Just what you don’t really want in a house you’re contemplating buying, methinks. A know-it-all, smart-alecky house imbued with human reasoning and a malevolent sentient. What a pain in the ass…!

So the consensus is as follows. THE LODGE, meh. It’s okay but it’s only okay. THE WRONG HOUSE, excellent. Scary, well-paced with no droopy or flagging bits and with a satisfying ending that only disappoints if you’re, like, super-fussy and hard to please.

I loved this film, anyway. I always love films about evil houses that have pre-ordained, murderous agendas. They really float my boat. Float my boat good. Watch it and float with me. We all float down here, dontcha know…?

Sandra Harris

Day 1 | 2 | 3| 4 | 5 | 6

A big thanks to Sandra for this review which was originally posted on her own site Sandra first rule of film club harris