Review: House at the End of the Street (2012)

Review by Disgruntled Monkey

Director: Mark Tonderai

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Max Thieriot, Elisabeth Shue

Writers: David Loucka , Jonathan Mostow

There’s always a house in every neighbourhood that has a story to tell. It could be a ghost story or a tale of someone snapping. People whisper to each other about it and point to it. Children gather on Halloween and dare each other to ring the door bell or walk inside if abandoned. House at the End of the Street deals with such a tale, but does it do it justice?

Unfortunately, no. It starts off well enough; it begins with an interesting premise and has some decent acting, especially from Jennifer Lawrence. In fact I think she’s so good in this movie it really high-lights the waste of talent on display. You see no matter the good point - and there are good points - this movie completely crumbles in the final act in every single way. From story to technical aspects, everything suffers.

Maybe there might have been something to salvage if the story was better paced but it moves at such a slow speed and when the ball finally drops the reveals are so bland in presentation that any hope of over the top fun is shot. Honestly, for the life of me I’m not sure what this movie was hoping to accomplish. There are some interesting ideas but they are never given enough time to flourish, instead, the movie focuses all of its attention on the teen drama.

Most of the movie pictures feature Jennifer Lawrence in a white shirt. Oh
well, i'm a lazy man, this shot will do.

I had heard the movie had problems and was only released because Jennifer Lawrence was beginning to be noticed. With the first third of the movie I thought that maybe people were being overly harsh. Then a few plot holes appear, continuity gets scrapped and some very big mistakes are made. Magical make up that appears and disappears, character leaps of logic that will leave your head spinning and, uncomfortably, morals that support those that are in the wrong.

Can you burn this movie at the stake? Well, not really. It’s the sort of bad movie that will be forgotten given time. I don’t recommend it for anyone and I urge those people who like really bad films to also give it a skip. Let this movie fade into obscurity.