House At The End Of The Street

Now that Halloween is almost upon us we are in for a run of low budget horror films. I enjoy seeing horror in the cinema but I am realistic and keep my expectations well in check.

House At The End Of The Street caught my attention as it starred Jennifer Lawrence.

PLOT: Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) moves to a new house with her estranged mother Sarah (Elisabeth Shue) and quickly discovers that Carrie-Anne, a young child, murdered her parents in the house next door before drowning in the lake. After a striking up a friendship with the sole survivor, Carrie-Anne’s older brother Ryan, (Max Thieriot) Elissa quickly falls for him however Ryan is hiding a dark secret about his sister. END PLOT

The plot of House At The End Of The Street is a mishmash of several clichéd tropes which are all mixed together to create one bland and tension free film. The fractured mother/daughter relationship plays out like a pre-teen drama and the subplot with the “Battle of the Bands” was filler at its most obvious.

At 101mins House At The End Of The Street was fairly long for its genre. If you take away all the scenes which had nothing to do with the main plot the film would have started and ended in the final act.

The twist which revealed the relationship between Ryan and Carrie-Anne wasn’t particularly clever and the final shot almost seemed like an afterthought just to force the point home.

Despite her young age Jennifer Lawrence has too much class and talent to be slumming it in a below par teen horror. Overall Lawrence proved once again that she is a very capable lead but let this be the last time we see her in a high school setting.

Max Thieriot is decent as Ryan who starts off as the shy teen who then descends into something much darker.

The adult cast of Elisabeth Shue and Gil Bellows’ local detective Weaver don’t add anything to the film.

The grand finale takes place in a basement with a dying battery powered torch providing some unoriginal lighting.  There is nothing remarkable about the cinematography. 

I am a jumper in the cinema. I could watch a character load a gun, listen to him announce he is preparing to fire and still jump when it bangs - I can’t help it. There were times during House At The End Of The Street that I jumped in spite of myself but there were zero scares in the film.

House At The End Of The Street is 12A horror at its most mundane and it gets a 3/10. The thrills, scares and even the obligatory “fuck” allowed in a 12A were missing. It is the after school special of horror films and is not worth your time.