House at the End of the Street

Coming from noisy, violent Chicago, a mother and her daughter rest in an idyllic (well in a Brothers Grimm sort of way) suburban woodsy area, in one of those incredibly expansive, fancy houses seemingly built for a six-person family (the kitchen alone is as big as most of my house). Getting it cheap because the real estate market reflects badly when a mother and father were hammer-killed by their brain-damaged daughter, a night shift nurse, Sarah (Elizabeth Shue), and her aspiring rock chic, daughter, Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) try to adjust to their surroundings.

 *½

Domestic angst is here in spades as Sarah worked long hours with little time for her daughter, and the absent father/husband gets thrown around as a device to beat each other up insult-wise. A young man, Ryan (Max Thieriot; who has always been well equipped to portray spooky weirdoes), is still living where his parents were slain, and he keeps a teenage girl he calls Carrie Anne (supposedly his sister, maybe?) locked in a room, tending to her, having trouble keeping her concealed (she gets away twice before he accidentally snaps her neck). 

Ryan is a tragic figure, his mere presence polarizing to the surrounding yuppie families who wished he’d leave so they could burn the house down, and Elissa is drawn to him. Sarah is very reluctant to have her daughter involved with someone as suspect as Ryan but a police officer named Weaver tries to assure her he’s a good kid. When a prick named Tyler (Nolan Gerard Funk)—a popular kid at the local school, straight A’s, sports, but behind of all of this is a punk who ridicules Elissa once she turns down his advances one night while attending what the parents of their teen children believe is a relief effort to raise money for starving kids in “Africa, Tibet, whatever” (spoken from one of the soccer moms at a gathering of adults in the neighborhood after Sarah arrives) and provokes Ryan—and his group of followers gang up on Ryan, destroying his car and kicking him repeatedly, there’s a retaliation that ends with Ryan breaking Tyler’s leg, and this sets off a chain of events that  result in Elissa discovering certain horrifying secrets about the boy she’s very interested in, leading to quite a night of survival and escape as dangers present themselves. 

I figure anyone would agree with a new friend of Elissa’s, who reacts uncomfortably to her interest in Ryan, that the moment he first shows up on screen an instant feeling of “stay as far away from this joker as you possibly can” is certain to arise. The fact that he turns out to be a nutcase is obviously no surprise. I agree the kid didn’t deserve to be so ill-treated (his parents turned out to be scumbags, shown in flashback), and the way he feels he’s so at fault does earn some sympathy, but all of this is washed away when the plot developments turn him into a complete sociopathic maniac, trying to find an appropriate substitute for the Carrie Anne he lost. 

I can’t fault the distributors for milking the success of The Hunger Games in promoting Jennifer Lawrence. Her star power is evident even in something so inconsequential as House at the End of the Street. A lot of stars often find themselves in horror films at one point or another—often before they get their big break, sometimes in the middle, and oftentimes towards the tail-end—and perhaps this is the one Lawrence will put behind her. Lawrence works her "too cool for the in-crowd" hip character rather well; she's a star so even when the movie and character aren't deserved of her skill-set, she manages to still squeeze something of value from the role. Having her interested in the social misfit, seeing something about him no one else seems to (which turns out to be nothing of what she thought), and caring about his plight, in turn, putting herself inadvertently in danger, gets the character in jeopardy at the end of the movie, thus setting up the terror scenario of being trapped and thrust into the potential prisoner role of Carrie Anne. The trials of a mother trying to do the right thing and start over after a rough patch of maternal miscues is of major importance in the plot; her struggles with Lawrence are well documented. Lawrence often finds herself opposing her mother's rules about staying away from Thieriot unless she's present, and their disconnect is crucial to how mother and daughter must join forces at the end when both their lives are endangered. Shue does what she can, expressing concern and frustration, admitting to Bellows her mistakes and desires to be a better parent.

 The previews pretty much told us that Thieriot was a whack-job so any real ambiguity/mystery about him was dissipated before even viewing the film. I think this actor has a long career because of his interesting face. His characters are often real anti-social, creepy types, though, so it would be nice if he could add other characterizations to his repertoire. He could wind up typecast if he doesn't. I think, at first, there was a goal to make him a sympathetic character in House at the End.. but it is soon decimated once the Carrie Anne business goes into overdrive.

The cheap pops and loud bangs just irritated the hell out of me. There was a need to warp light and cause the first-person perspective to go askew when looking through the eyes of Carrie Anne, and the filmmakers design her hair as if she were an onryō. The twist involving Carrie Anne could have left more of an impact, but, good grief, so many of us have seen such plot developments in times past in regards to psycho-thrillers and slashers. Mommy and Daddy not happy with the missing daughter once so important (so important that while the kids are unattended outside swinging, they’re smoking crack), expecting their “responsible” son to assume her role; it’s old hat, shopworn. There’s also a twist regarding a cop (Gill Bellows) who has served as the protector for the kid who lost the family to a bloody massacre (as a college kid, portrayed by Max Thieriot (of Wes Craven’s My Soul to Take)) that just comes out of left field; to be honest, this development seems desperate as if the filmmakers during the script process felt the need for another twist. There’s also a moment where Thieriot stabs Shue in the stomach, making sure to slowly drive the blade in nice and deep until only the handle remains visible; yet, she returns later to hit him in the head with a hammer. Thieriot also has a character exactly like killers formally mocked in the Scream movies as he is shot multiple times in the torso, seems dead, with Lawrence trying to get the keys out of his pocket so she can unlock the basement door, with him grabbing her arm, taking a shot by a wounded but surprisingly active Shue (who just got stabbed really deep minutes before) with a hammer to the noggin. He’s dead, right? Nope. Later, Shue and Lawrence (no surprise) pack up their shit and decide to go someplace else, with the closing scene featuring Thieriot in an institution cell taking a dead-cold look at us with a flashback of Mommy dressing him as Carrie Anne. With eyes rolling, I left the film and will probably forget it completely once this review drops on my blog and I pursue other movie interests.