Better the Devil you know

The House of the Devil (2009)

Directed by: Ti West
Written by: Ti West
Starring: Jocelin Donahue, Greta Gerwig, Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov

Warning: Spoilers
Second warning: Spoilers won’t make you less scared if you watch the film after reading this.

As the film’s opening titles suggest, the 1980s were filled with ‘Satanic panic,’ regarding demonic possession and the idea of the Devil’s presence in the real world. According to the film, the events that transpire in the next 98 minutes are based on actual events.

But don’t be fooled: these credits, rather than a warning of a chilling recreation of history, are merely the start of an expertly handled period horror film. More than a pastiche, parody, homage, or satire, The House of the Devil is a film that may as well have been buried in someone’s garage until three years ago. According to West himself, the film is set in 1983, but the real feat is that it looks like it was made in 1983.

The plot is this: college sophomore Samantha (Donahue) needs money to pay rent for her new apartment. She takes on a babysitting job in an isolated part of town on the night of a full lunar eclipse. When she arrives at the house accompanied by her best friend Megan (Gerwig), her employer Mr Ulman reveals that it’s not a babysitting job at all but actually involves looking after his elderly mother.-in-law. After demanding a higher wage, Samantha agrees to stay. Megan leaves with a promise to return later to pick her up. And that’s when shit gets cray.

The film was shot using 16mm film, a popular film stock used in the 1980s and uses filming techniques used in 1980s horror films, zooming on actors and using freeze-frames and 1970s/1980s opening credits and end credits. The set design and costume is spot-on, down to the Coke cups at the pizzeria to Samantha’s Sony Walkman (purchased on Ebay). The themes too are in keeping with horror films of the time, utilising mystical elements seen in slashers like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the Full Moon) and themes of demonic possession and evil houses, seen in films like The Exorcist and The Amityville Horror.

West is meticulous in creating a film that perfectly reflects what may be considered the Golden Age of horror, but what is also admirable is the contemporary flair given to the story and a Generation-Y understanding that while these films are classic blueprints for the films that would follow, they don’t necessarily still deliver the chills they once did.

Rather than going straight for gore and horror, West instead sets up a story filled with a growing sense of unease, creating a film that goes for a sustained sense of terror. While it's a classic Hitchcockian move, it seems a relatively recent trend in horror.

The initial story is one many audience goers would easily sympathise with. Samantha’s college dorm-mate is a nightmare and she needs to get out. When she finds a nice apartment, she realises she will struggle financially to remain there. That this leads her to the basement of a family of Satan-worshipping psychos feels more realistic and more organic than other horror films and especially ones made in the 1970s and 1980s. We don’t want her to stay but some of us will understand why. Megan, who has a rich father, cannot understand why Samantha chooses to stay and so is upset with her. But what she doesn’t understand is that desperation for money, one that is not about being able to afford a designer dress, but one that is about keeping a roof above your head. Not only that, but Samantha is more sensitive than Megan, and feels pity for Mr Ulman and his predicament. He’s a sympathetic character despite giving nothing away and giving Samantha no real assurance that he is trustworthy.

This idea is also explored in Fincher’s version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. When serial killer Martin Vanger traps journalist Mikael Blomkvist in his basement he explains that the reason he is there is not because Vanger overpowered him but because he stayed in the house despite his better judgement so as not to offend Vanger or put him offside, remarking that this is how he lured his other victims. So too in The House of the Devil does Samantha stay despite her better judgement. The idea of leaving and feeling safe is not nearly as satisfying as taking $400 home with her after one night’s work.

That the most horrifying events happen so late in the film makes it more shocking as well, particularly as you’ve come to identify with the characters and actually want them to survive, an element often absent from slasher films of the 1980s. When Megan’s head is blown away by a stranger who turns out to be the son of the crazy Ulmans, it’s shocking not only because of the suddenness of the murder but because we’ve gotten to know her. Where thrillers often set up likeable characters to create tension when they are threatened, often horror films rely merely on the shock of a character being suddenly and violently murdered and here West strikes a balance between shocking violence and character development.

The concept of an evil house, or killer’s lair being found in the basement or attic of a house is definitely not new and that’s the point; in the 1970s and 1980s, when the rules were still being written, heroines frequently stayed in a creepy house too long, or ventured down to a dank basement to find her worst nightmares realised. That the house itself is not particularly frightening adds to the horror later, when Samantha discovers the people she is working for are not the real owners of the house. But before that discovery is an extended period in which Samantha explores the home alone.

Knowing that her friend has been brutally murdered, the audience watches her with a rising sense of unease, waiting for a hand to grab her, or an unlocked door to lead to the horrors that we are now convinced await her from somewhere within. That this does not happen until the end of the film makes it all the more disturbing. The film’s final sequence in which Samantha is impregnated with the spawn of Satan is made all the more horrific for the initial building of tension; the façade of domestic drama or subtle thriller falls away to reveal the real film underneath. This is what everyone was afraid was going on in basements around the US in the 1980s: Satanic cults abusing young women in some psychotic belief that they were bringing about Hell on Earth and the return of their master. Samantha’s attack symbolises that the rules have now changed.

With Samantha’s escape comes more violence, more gore and more blood. That she systematically annihilates her attackers feels cheap, almost too easy. She hasn’t really proven her worth as a strong heroine. But it’s not until the film’s final moments that you realise it has been pointless. The terror initially brought about from wondering how she will survive is now a feeling of terror precisely because she survives, as the final scene reveals she is pregnant with the spawn of Satan. The psychotic Ulmans have won after all. This recalls the final chilling moments of Rosemary’s Baby. We're hopeful that she will survive and the child will be destroyed. But instead, we see Rosemary’s maternal instincts kick in and we know it is too late for her. The film's final shot of Samantha recovering from her self-inflicted gunshot wound to head, having just heard that she and her unborn child are safe, is just as chilling.

Ti West’s thorough knowledge of the horror genre and its historical development means that he has not only created a brilliantly realised reflexive genre piece but also a chilling horror film that perfectly recreates the terror those iconic horror films would have produced in their heyday.