House at the End of the Street

During the fallout of The Hunger Games, Jennifer Lawrence starred in this flick that managed to pretty much slip under the radar and out of sight. That being said, I'd heard of it before I watched it, mainly because I keep seeing it on shelves at movie stores. With a name like House at the End of the Street, I was expecting another one of those infernal Last House on the Left knockoffs but that's actually not really what this movie is about. So if you were thinking that Jennifer Lawrence was going to be naked in this one, you'd have to take your boners elsewhere.

This is probably going to end up being a pretty short review, mainly because there's simply not a lot to say about this movie. It's alright for what it is.

The plot goes that Jennifer Lawrence, who's plays a girl named Elissa, and her mother move into a spacious new house out in the middle of somewhere, undeterred by the plethora of urban myths that sprout from their new neighbor's residence. See, about four years ago, there was a case of double-homicide that took place within that very house and now the souls of the dead are said to often be seen lurking about the surrounding woodlands. But don't worry, this movie would have you believe it's a psychological thriller and there's nothing of the supernatural to be found over it's hour and forty minute run time.

One night, Elissa gets caught in some of the fakest looking rain I've seen in the past decade of mainstream movies and this charming young fellow pictured above offers to give her a ride. In the movie his name is Ryan Jacobson and I'm too lazy to look up his filmography. He lives alone in the "haunted" house and is the son of the very two people who were killed, who were offed by none other than his younger sister. Rather than seek out the medical attention she clearly deserves, he keeps her locked away in his basement in secret. Despite how simple that sounds, she manages to escape several times and every time she does so, she tries to kill the nearest living thing she can get her fingers around because, as we all know, mentally unstable people just like to fuck shit up.

But as any relationship between a pair of opposite-sexed teenagers will ultimately become, Elissa and the mild-mannered (aka beta) Ryan start getting kinky before long, much to the disapproval of Elissa's overprotective/historically neglecting mother. Eventually Elissa ends up in Ryan's house alone and, like any classic horror protagonist, has no respect for anyone else's privacy and starts rummaging through all of Ryan's shit. This eventually leads her to the basement where the feral sibling is being kept and Ryan has no choice but to come clean.

Despite her being sworn to secrecy, Ryan quickly jumps Elissa and ties her up in his sister's bedroom. Ryan then explains that the girl who he's been keeping isn't his sister at all but rather a new girl he replaced her with because his real sister died in an accident that was largely his fault and that he wants to upgrade his prisoner to Jennifer Lawrence instead of the terribly average female he's already got.
So from then on it's just a fight in the house. A few other people get embroiled in the midst of the sequence and the gripping battle has an immaculate body count of 1. Overall, it's just not a very thrilling few scenes. After that, the movie pretty much just ends.

I've always had to force myself to not let the PG-13 rating be a turn off when it comes to horror because movies like The Grudge (and I mean the foreign one) have been PG-13 and were certainly pretty scary. As I discussed  in my past article, Less is More, I actually much prefer movies to try and be more reserved and hold the special effects and violence to make way for a more thrilling plot but here it just feels like violence is missing. There's a scene where someone gets hit in the face with the business end of a hammer and there's nary a drop of blood to be seen. It almost felt like a TV version where they censor out all of the good stuff and moreover horror movies that don't have gore out the wazoo are able to keep your attention by way of suspense, which this film largely lacked.  

Rather, their main source of attention-grabbing are Jennifer Lawrence's boobs.

My main problem with House at the End of the Street is that not a lot really happens. I just summarized pretty much every major event and it probably only took you about a minute to read whereas the whole movie is close to two hours long. Furthermore, not only is it largely unexciting, it doesn't contain anything I haven't already seen a hundred times before. In fact, it kind of reminds me of The People Under the Stairs but at least that was really different and bizarre so it's kind of hard to forget. With the case of this movie, all I can really give is a resounding "meh".

It seems to me that the filmmakers were banking largely on the name Jennifer Lawrence and I'll admit, that is what made this movie stand out to me. Testament to this is the fact that 95% of the images I can pull up on this flick are screenshots of her. Other than the fact that she's in it and that she's a star (and don't get me wrong, she is good in the movie), there's nothing remarkable about this movie at all and it'll will soon slip out of memory and never be seen again.

5.5/10 - Boring and unremarkable