Director Robby Henson has scored the Christian thriller hat trick: he’s now adapted three supernatural suspense novels in just three years. He started with The Visitation by Frank Peretti and then turned to Ted Dekker’s Thr3e. And so, it makes sense that his third would be House, a tag-team work by Peretti and Dekker.
When the novel House released, I was curious about the brainchild of two of Christian publishing’s bestselling novelists. I’d enjoyed some work by each author; knowing their strengths, I figured they’d knock the trapped-in-a-house-with-a-killer story out of the park. Not so much. Actually, I really disliked the book. However, I kept thinking: But as a movie, this could be pretty good. The book possessed good tension and eerie scenes that, if stripped of extraneous, heavy-handed narration, could make for a fast and intense ride.
So, I was glad when I heard about the film version. And I do like it better than the book (although that may not say much). It’s not the scary horror film I thought it could be—or that I think the studio is trying to sell it as—but House has some real strengths. It does share some of the problems plaguing both of Hensons’ critically-panned Christian films—but all three have consistently improved and House is clearly the best.
Like the book, the movie centers on troubled married couple Jack (Reynaldo Rosales) and Stephanie (Heidi Dippold) as they are on their way to see a marriage counselor. They get lost and end up stranded in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, they stumble on an old inn where they meet more stranded travelers, Randy (J.P. Davis) and Leslie (Julie Ann Emery). Things get weird when they meet the family that runs the place—three odd hillbilly characters who constantly point out that their visitors are sinners with evil hearts. Things get worse when a killer known only as the Tin Man shows up traps them all in the hotel with the frightening message that at dawn he’ll kill them—unless the group provides one dead body first.
Obviously, the film is about the sinfulness of our hearts and a big reminder that the wages of sin are always death. Someone has to die for each of these traveler’s sins. But will the Tin Man really spare them if they deliver the body of one of the house’s other sinners?
That’s a very promising Christian film premise. But like the book, the promise is marred in the execution. The camera work, set design, special effects, and look are pretty top-notch—a real improvement on a lot of movies by Christian filmmakers. And the acting, especially by Rosales as Jack, is solid (with the caveat that most of the film requires them to just run around and look scared). But missteps overshadow the pluses.
For starters, the film doesn’t achieve the horror or creep factor it could have—or that the trailer seems to promise—mainly because of strange stylistic choices. Henson employs a lot of MTVish fast-forward and quick-cut devices that make it very hard for the terror to settle over the viewer. Think about classic horror films like The Shining or the original Halloween. They weren’t flashy or in-your-face. These films subtly and slowly created the scare tactics, or let the terror linger menacingly around the next corner. That is not allowed here. Case in point: There’s a dining room scene that could have been skin-crawlingly eerie as the weird host family batters their guests with questions like, “You gonna violate your woman in my house?” But instead of letting the viewer soak up the sinister awkwardness, the camera never stops moving, 45 things are happening at once, and quick cuts break up the frenetic scene to the point that I couldn’t feel the scene simply because I couldn’t catch up with it.
Some could say that truly scary movies and clean Christian films are dichotomies. I don’t agree. You don’t have to be gory or sexualized or evil to be scary. Two modern examples of popular, but bloodless, atmospheric creepers would be 1999’s Sixth Sense and 2001’s The Others. Both were PG-13 films that delivered legitimate scares while creating eerie tension (especially The Others). In addition, The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005, PG-13), which conveyed strong spiritual ideas and was directed by a believer, was often downright frightening. Unfortunately, Henson’s supernatural thrillers—and House with its potential to be a true scary flick—don’t achieve these quality levels.
One of the pitfalls of Christian supernatural thrillers—especially those based on books—is imparting the supernatural side in a way that is both clear to the viewer and true to the way God works. While House is true to the book’s handling of the supernatural message, the basic difference in printed word and moving picture change the way it comes across. There are plusses and minuses to both. I felt the central Christian metaphor of the book’s conclusion (i.e. how the wages of sin are paid) was too heavy-handed and forced because the narration repeatedly over-explained it. On one hand, I think the movie does a better job at showing this element without over-telling it. But on the other hand, I am not sure it’s clear enough and thus, the metaphor breaks down. Instead of being a triumphant moment of self-sacrifice, substitution and acceptance of salvation, the climax is a random shooting followed by a crazy white light that somehow saves the day—and I wasn’t convinced the characters even knew why or how they’d been saved form the Tin Man.
Because of this ambiguity, House‘s meanings will be clear to Christians who understand the central tenets of substitution and salvation, but I’m not convinced it will mean anything to non-Christian audiences. Besides, secular scary movie fans will probably react with a “been there, done that” shrug regarding the movie’s conventions and not be very entertained. In fact, the film’s “gotcha” reveal may make many audiences feel cheated—like when a TV show tries to tell viewers that an entire season has just been a dream. This resolution—substantially different from the book—may not sit well with fans of the book.
While House can be frustrating because it had so much right but didn’t quite make it over the hump, there is hope that the true signs of improvement here will lead to greater things for Henson’s future supernatural adaptations and Christian filmmaking at large.
Talk About It
Discussion starters- The film begins with John 1:15 on screen: “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it” (niv). What significance to the story does this have? How does the understanding of the light come into play in the movie?
- Compare and contrast the climax with the death of Christ. How do they reflect one another? How are they different?
- What were Jack and Stephanie able to overcome that Randy and Leslie were not? What are the differences in these couples?
- What does the big reveal in the last minutes imply to you? What’s your impression of what happened?
The Family Corner
For parents to considerHouse is rated R for some violence and terror. While controversial for being a Christian film tagged with the R rating, it is understandable when you think of the scenes of children in danger. A young girl is somewhat graphically blown away at close range by a shotgun. There are several other scenes of guns being aimed at helpless people—and one case of a young child shooting his father. There’s implied incest and child molestation. A young girl drowns when ice on a lake shatters. There are scenes of knife play and crazy people chasing victims with meat cleavers and other objects. There also are at least two times that “Oh, God” is used in seemingly more of a swearing way than truly appealing to God.
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