The House of the Devil

From the title onwards, The House of the Devil’s set-up is so deriv­a­tive­ly famil­iar it inspires a per­verse com­fort. Pret­ty, shy high-school girl agrees to babysit at short notice for an insis­tent old­er man who’s elu­sive on the details but will­ing to pay big.

She is dri­ven to an iso­lat­ed house in the woods in the dead of night by her increas­ing­ly con­cerned best-friend. Left alone, she air­i­ly drifts from room to room of this desert­ed man­sion, sift­ing through the archa­ic, unset­tling detri­tus of its occu­pants. And it just so hap­pens, by the way, to be a full moon.

The pow­er of this film lies in the approach to the inevitable final act, rather than the real­i­sa­tion of the act itself. Sus­pense­ful and antic­i­pa­to­ry, direc­tor Ti West know­ing­ly riffs on the genre by absorb­ing and then extend­ing every archetype.

But it is clear from the open­ing scenes that the guy in the dri­ving seat has com­plete con­trol of his vehi­cle. And in the radi­ant Jocelin Don­ahue, all feath­ered hair, non­cha­lant shrugs, wide-eyed glances and self-con­scious smiles, he has found a lead that exudes an effort­less, inno­cent grace. Watch­ing her approach her impend­ing fate is both as painful and unnerv­ing­ly beguil­ing as watch­ing a moth try to seduce a flame.

Although a peri­od piece root­ed in the tone and tex­ture of ​’80s chic hor­ror, The House of the Dev­il is also a con­scious betray­al of post-mod­ern pop­ulist sen­si­bil­i­ties – a vivid rejec­tion of the cyn­i­cal­ly lin­ear pur­suits of video-game influ­enced ​‘cre­ative kill’ films that have come to dom­i­nate the indus­try, and are designed to be as dis­pos­able as a paper cup.

West has, there­fore, exiled him­self from the main­stream whilst attempt­ing to return hor­ror to its hal­lowed roots. This is the work of a man who views him­self as a suc­ces­sor to Polan­s­ki and who’s artis­tic ambi­tions ref­er­ences ​’80s hor­ror but falls into a canon that extends as far back as George Cukor’s Gaslight and the Vic­to­ri­an goth­ic tra­di­tion pre­ced­ing it. Any ego­tism that may exist here, though, is whol­ly sup­port­ed by a pal­pa­ble author­i­ty over form and con­tent and an admirable ded­i­ca­tion to sin­cere, cinelit­er­ate craftsmanship.

eBay must love Ti West. Every aspect of the film’s mise-en-scene – the high-waist­ed den­im and checked shirts, the fast food, prog-pop and clunky tech­nol­o­gy – has been lov­ing­ly assem­bled to recall ingrained Amer­i­cana. There is an obses­sive-com­pul­sive com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing a sense of non­cha­lant real­ism here, a Bazin­ian nor­mal­i­ty in which the inevitable can inex­orably play itself out.

Only 29, this is already West’s fifth fea­ture film. His career, though, has had its false dawns. After debut­ing with The Roo­st­and Trig­ger Man, both low-bud­get DIY art-hor­ror films that gained rave reviews on the indie fes­ti­val cir­cuit but were nev­er afford­ed a wide release, he was entrust­ed with the large(ish) bud­get of Cab­in Fever 2. Shot in 2007, the project was wrest­ed from his con­trol in post-pro­duc­tion due to cre­ative dif­fer­ences and West has now dis­as­so­ci­at­ed him­self with the straight to DVD film whose release date is still shroud­ed in mystery.

It seems frus­tra­tion with the mar­ket did not end there. After pro­vid­ing West with almost com­plete auton­o­my, his financiers Dark Sky Pro­duc­tions cut a four-minute char­ac­ter devel­op­ment sequence out of the mid­dle of The House of the Dev­il just before its Amer­i­can release. West was indig­nant, accus­ing them of belit­tling his vision and the audience’s sen­si­bil­i­ties. ​‘The movie’s called [The] House of the fuck­ing Dev­il,’ he is quot­ed as say­ing. ​‘It’s gonna get there.’

The House of the Dev­il­may see him emerge from the hor­ror cir­cles and gain wider recog­ni­tion, assum­ing the audi­ence embrace his dis­tinc­tive­ly pen­sive direc­to­r­i­al style. But West is swim­ming against a strong cur­rent. Let’s just hope he doesn’t get tired.