The Open House

From the premise of The Open House, I was expecting more on the lines of Disturbia (2007) or something like it and of that quality, unfortunately it was disappointing. Directed by Matt Angel (mostly have directed TV series shows) and Suzanne Coote (who have as little as 5 titles in her resumé), this horror/thriller flick tries to give everyone a scare and a sad attempt at a supposed head-scratching plotline.

Long story short, The Open House is about a grieving mother and son moves to a mountain house, owned by the mother’s sister, when they moved in the said house, someone started to mess with them. As generic as it sounds, it could’ve been done better. Unfortunately they did too much that it became a hot mess.

Annoying use of music

Their incorporation of crescendo music to give that feel that something’s going to happen was annoying. I get that crescendos can trigger that feel, but they used it way too much and most of time there was nothing there. They used it too much even early on in the film that towards the latter it wasn’t effective anymore. It just sounds like noise. Annoying as hell.

Irrelevant scenes

I’m honestly not sure what their goal was showing too many scenes of the mom naked while taking a shower, I mean I get the shower kill scene much like the iconic shower kill in Psycho (1960), but none of it happened here, not even an attempt.

The start of The Open House we see Logan running at a supposed Olympian level, so I thought “Ohh… Maybe he’ll use this as an advantage later on.” But no., we never saw it, in the end he just ran like a little girl because of his impaired vision.

The Open House added too many “possible suspects” to the storyline that I stopped caring. First, their widowed neighbor with Alzheimer, Martha (played by Patricia Bethune), at first I thought “Hmm… well, she might be the wife of our supposed killer.” But as the story progressed, she was easily dismissed. Then we get the store clerk, Chris (played by Sharif Atkins), another possible suspect, but again, easily dismissed. He was shifty at one point but they didn’t developed it further that he became irrelevant.

No reveal whatsoever

We never got to see who the real killer was, we saw a blurry image of him through Logan’s (played by Dylan Minnette) impaired vision, he was a white male and looked a lot like the plumber that came in, I think if they revealed that it was truly the plumber, I would’ve rated this higher. Just to tie everything up. Their attempt at a head-scratching finale was a bust.

Conclusion

Don’t expect a good thriller out of The Open House, just grab a popcorn and pop open a can, the buzz will help you appreciate this movie even for a little. The Open House is a good movie to put up in the background while doing some chores. Don’t worry, you’re not missing out on anything, feel free to skip this one. If you really want to watch a movie of the same exact theme and the exact same title, watch “Open House (2010)” starring True Blood actors, Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer.