Some call it mumblegore.
And how are we feeling this fine Friday the 13th? In good fettle for some frights, I hope.
The grindhouse revival movement (which kind of sounds like something from a late '90s / early 2000s NME, like 'new acoustic movement' or 'new wave of the new wave') bringing back a tint of 1970s and early '80s grunginess to the oft-stale horror genre of the early 21st century probably began in earnest with Rob Zombie's 2003 House of 1000 Corpses featuring his feted and foetid Firefly family, and the 2007 Robert Rodriguez / Quentin Tarantino Grindhouse double joint of Death Proof and Planet Terror offered proof - if proof be need be - that evocations of that rough and ready New York 42nd Street / video nasty aesthetic scratched a nostalgic itch for many exploitation horror fans.
Filmmaker Ti West has certainly made his mark on the subgenre with his X trilogy starring modern day scream queen and genre renaissance woman Mia Goth, comprising 2022's X and Pearl as well as 2024's MaXXXine, but made his debut years earlier with 2005's The Roost - starring sometime Francis 'The Tooth Fairy' Dolarhyde in Michael Mann's 1986 Manhunter Tom Noonan (though to me Noonan will always be the Frankenstein who made me cry in Fred Dekker's The Monster Squad of the next year), who would be rehired by West for the film under discussion in this post, whenever I get round to it. The Roost would also feature actor-writer-director-producer and general man of many hats Larry Fessenden in a small role as a truck driver. Fessenden has of course injected new life into the horror staples of the Vampire, Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolfman (in 1997's Habit, 2019's Depraved and 2023's Blackout respectively - the last of which ended on a Marvel-style tag scene teasing the possibility of a modern day Fessenden-style Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man monster mash team up) and when not revitalising the Universal Monsters for the modern era acted as producer for West's initial brace of movies: in addition to The Roost producing 2007's Trigger Man, 2009's House of the Devil (more on which anon) and 2011's The Innkeepers. I guess the 2009 Cabin Fever: Spring Fever - which West himself disowned and requested be put out under the standard Hollywood bland pseudonym of Alan Smithee - was just a step too far.
At least with the movie currently under discussion West made a film in 2009 that he could be happy putting his name to. The House of the Devil is certainly worthy of a mention in anyone's horror resume, featuring among its cast some very familiar veterans of genre and exploitation cinema in addition to upcoming soon to be famous talent - I don't want to overdo that bit by saying it's akin to Dazed and Confused or Can't Hardly Wait with killings or something... but it kind of is, as its cast includes future stars Greta Gerwig - who was in White Noise (directed by her husband Noah Baumbach, who was previously married to Jennifer Jason Leigh so there's a jammy git with a good eye for the ladies) but sadly not the one with Michael Keaton - and, in a cameo voice role as an emergency services telephone operator, Lena Dunham.
Filmed in the style of an early 1980s grindhouse-flavoured video nasty - the sort of film those of us of a certain age might get the same pangs of nostalgia over as Stranger Things, but with murder and gore rather than Spielbergian kids on BMXes - with the 16mm film grain and lurid yellow titles over freeze framed shots adding period verisimilitude, the proceedings get underway as we are introduced to our lead, Samantha (Jocelin Donahue and her amazing cheekbones [great band, I've got all of their early E.P.s, before they sold out and went commercial]). Sam is engaged in the age-old ritual activity of house hunting for new accommodation whilst at university. I'm sure most of us have been there: no-one should have to put up with staying in the halls of residence with fellow students who engage in behaviour like deciding to subsist on a sack of raw potatoes to save on food shopping so they have more booze money and subsequently suffer a diarrhoea attack so massive that it bedecks the walls (true story), or having a penchant for very loud buggery at inconvenient times of the night (those walls are thin, man). In Sam's case, it appears she's fed with of her roommate Megan (Gerwig, sporting a bang-on on trend for the era blonde feathered do that makes her look like Laurie Forman from That '70s Show) and her boyfriend's nocturnal activities and so finds herself scoping out a decent property at agreeable rates owned by a landlady played by the legend that is Dee Wallace (forever The Howling's Karen White to me, but most probably known to others as Elliott's mother in Spielberg's lachrymose fantasy E.T. or Brad's mother in Stephen Herek's far superior Critters; either way, she's a matriarch who has to deal with aliens and her innumerable maternal roles in genre cinema has led to the affectionate nickname of "horror's mom").
Catching sight of a flyer requiring the paid services of a babysitter for the evening, Sam makes the rather unfortunate decision to call the telephone number and make inquiries about the position. The offer of her services (not in an escorting/sexual services kind of way obviously, though I know for a fact that lots of university students used to do that to make some easy spare cash and have some fun on the side. If you're reading this Jo, a.k.a. Amber, you know what I mean, right?) is eagerly taken up by the older man on the other end of the line who is desperate to avail himself of her sitter services. Not face-sitter services, I stress, though I wouldn't say no. I'd say "Yass, queening!", obviously.
Hi again, Jo. Long time no see.
This is Mr Ulman (Tom Noonan, who most of us will immediately recognise as Francis Dollarhyde alias the Tooth Fairy from Michael Mann's stylish and superlative 1986 Hannibal the Cannibal introducer Manhunter and / or the sympathetic Frankenstein Monster from the following year's wonderful Universal Monsters-meet-The Goonies fest The Monster Squad), who is extremely anxious to have her for the evening as he and his wife Mrs Ulman (cult film favourite Mary Woronov, Calamity Jane from the original Corman-produced Death Race 2000; or maybe fleeting Narn ambassadorial assistant Na' Toth from Babylon 5 for us '90s kids who weren't around for the '70s) have an urgent appointment on this night of a full lunar eclipse and need somebody to watch both the house and the unseen elderly 'Mother' upstairs. A fee of $400 for an easy night's work of watching TV convinces her to stay.
Too high, too far, too soon - she saw the hole in the moon
Leaving, Megan is shot and killed by a bearded guy (mumblegore mainstay A. J. Bowen, who would reteam with Donahue ten tears later in Josh Lobo's I Trapped the Devil), who for some reason I find reminiscent of Youtube reactor Josh from 'Target Audience' - talking of the forces of darkness, I see Paramount is clamping down on their Star Trek reaction videos again - wearing a woolen beanie hat that in combination with the beard also makes him look like far right reactionary tool and Russian paid shill Tim Pool: a clear marker of true evil. We will later discover this to be Victor Ulman, the son of the Mr and Mrs of this diabolical maison.
Samantha has been left a number to call for a pizza if hungry, and the delivery guy is the aforesaid beardy weirdy Victor who brings her a medium pepperoni loaded with drugs. The night of the eclipse is closing in, and when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore. And our lovely babysitter / houseminder has been selected on this night of darkness when Luna hides her face away to be the recipient of the amorous advances of the Devil himself.
Black hole sun won't you come and wash away the pain
Knocked out by the dosed up pizza, Sam groggily regains consciousness to find herself the centrepiece of an eerie occult ritual involving all of the Ulman family - including the daemonic witch-like Mother. "Where did they get those cloaks?" I found myself wondering, Homer Simpson-style.
Managing to escape but pursued by Mr Ulman she has the chance to shoot him but in despair she turns the gun on herself, leading to an incredibly bleak ending with Sam left brain dead on a life-glug as a human incubator for Satanic spawn; reminiscent of a recent Trumpian MAGA 'pro-life' red state keeping a brain dead woman on life support as an incubator for a baby. With a world like this, it's easy to think that the maybe the forces of Darkness truly have won after all and we are truly living in the era of the dark of the moon. Still, you've got to laugh or you'd cry, eh?
The cinematic horror genre began in 1896 with Georges Melies' The House of the Devil (Le Manoir du diable), so it seems somewhat fitting that its namesake would take pride of place in revitalising the genre by harkening back to its past - albeit a relatively more recent past; it being more soundly commercial to play to the nostalgia of living memory and easier to shoot on 16mm and give the cast feather cuts than to shoot on silent monochrome with period Victorian costumes et al. Still, it feels like the closing of a circle. Which, as the Incredible String Band taught us, is still unbroken.
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