The House of the Devil (2009)

"In the 1980s, college student Samantha Hughes takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse. She slowly realizes her clients harbour a terrifying secret; they plan to use her in a satanic ritual."

I don't know what it is about "The House of the Devil" which causes me to fall asleep every time I try to watch it but the same thing happened three times in a row last night. Eventually I gave up and went to bed. Not to be beaten by it, I watched the second half of the DVD as soon as I woke up this morning.

Having battled with this movie many times on Netflix, my only explanation for its soporific effect on me is that it's boring as can be. For at least the first hour, it's all very slow with no atmosphere. It could just be the story of any girl, past, present or future, who goes to a college in New York state and takes a babysitting job to pay her rent.

It's all talk with droning American voices plus lots of shots of old wooden sheds which upstate New Yorkers laughably refer to as houses. This is no different to what I wake up to every day. It's all blandness and drudgery, but it's not horror.

If I hadn't read the three paragraph introduction to "The House of the Devil" which flashed up on screen before the opening titles, I honestly wouldn't have known that it was supposed to be set in the 1980s. Nothing looks any different now in New York state (or even Connecticut which was where this was actually filmed) compared to 30 years ago. I would guess that most of it isn't much different to 50 or 60 years ago either especially when it comes to the cars, not having light switches beside the doors to rooms, or eating bad pizza. Ti West documented these things really well but disguised them as a horror movie.

Nothing really happens in "The House of the Devil" until, as the pretentious critics call it, "the third reel". Then it's just like every other "unwilling Satanic sacrifice" movie complete with an escape scene which, in fairness, is pretty well done and doesn't have as many stupid decisions made by the victim as some others.

I must admit that Jocelin Donahue is quite nice to look at and plays a good part. Her character, Samantha, just isn't very likeable but is certainly less irritating than her friend, Megan (played by Greta Gerwig). I wouldn't want either of them in my house though.

Having never bought into the fanboy appreciation of "The House of the Devil" on the various forums, the only thing which I can think of which makes up for the dullness of the rest of it are that the kill scenes are rather satisfying. The tacked-on hospital scene epilogue should have been left off though. It should have ended with Tom Noonan's cries of "No, no, no!"

I don't really recommend "The House of the Devil" because it's sort of weird in a not very good way and fails in its attempt to be cleverer than it actually is. I haven't seen any of Ti West's other movies, "Cabin Fever 2", "The Innkeepers" or "V/H/S", and I really have no desire to now either.

Borderland (2007)

"On a trip to a Mexican border town, three college friends stumble upon a human-sacrifice cult."

Loosely based on a case which occurred in Mexico in 1989 where a satanic cult called "narcosatanicos" killed at least 20 people, "Borderland" actually turned out to be little more than a clone of "Hostel" (2005) and "Turistas" (2006). So now you have another country which you know never to visit.

It's not a bad story and, considering it was one of the "After Dark Horrorfest" films, it's actually very well made. I wasn't too keen on the look of it to begin with as it went the clichéd route of using lots of browns but I found myself getting drawn in by the characters who weren't such complete assholes as you'd usually find in something of this nature.

Of course, the biggest attraction for me was Martha Higareda who played Valeria. There wasn't much else to look at since it was a mostly male film with three pretty boy TV actors, one a bit rougher round the edges than the others, and a load of sinister Mexicans. Sean Astin was in it as one of the bad guys but I couldn't tell if he was acting or not.

The torture and gore scenes were some of the most evil which I've ever seen, not because of the effects per se, but just in the mean-spirited way that they carried out. These were probably the sickest bunch of satanists that I've seen portrayed on film to date.

Although it was all rather slow, the only place "Borderland" really fell down was towards the end when it just got messy and didn't follow the normal formula for doing things. The dynamic changed in a very extreme way and the last fifteen minutes or so felt like a whole new film had been tacked on.

The ending itself was very unsatisfying as it ran out of steam and used title cards to say what happened afterwards rather than neatly tying up all the loose ends within the action itself.

Overall, I enjoyed it but it was just another slightly below average "torture porn" with different actors and locations.

Spellbinder (1988)

"A young lawyer, after falling in love with a beautiful woman, finds that she has an extremely mysterious past."

Here's another one from my Video Vault which I first watched in the early '90s on VHS and has now turned up on Netflix just to disappoint me. Actually, it wasn't too bad at all but just not quite as sexy as I remembered it.

Starring Tim Daly (Tyne Daly's younger brother) and Kelly Preston (John Travolta's wife), "Spellbinder" is like a made-for-TV version of "The Wicker Man" but with mostly really good looking actors in it and a greater emphasis on witchcraft. You could almost write it off as simply a supernatural romance if it wasn't for all the horror elements.

Even if you've seen "The Wicker Man", this isn't all that predictable and the twist, when it comes right at the end, is still a shock and makes you feel quite bad for Tim Daly's character.

The only problem with "Spellbinder" is that after all the hot sexy stuff quite early on, the story tends to drag on and on without much action. There are a couple of special effects but mostly it's all talk as the story turns increasingly more sinister.

It's still a really good story with some nice performances but, once Kelly Preston stops getting naked, most male viewers will probably lose interest.

Dead Birds (2004)

"A group of Confederate soldiers who hole up in an abandoned plantation after robbing a bank, and find themselves at the mercy of supernatural forces."

"Dead Birds" was the latest in a long line of crappy DVDs that I've rented from Netflix this month. It's not that the film itself was completely awful but the DVD itself was scuffed up so badly that it was skipping and sticking all over the place at the beginning.

From the titles "Dead Birds" looked like a quality production and the opening bank robbery scene was really very well done. A head being blown off with a shotgun was completely lush and the gunfight as the robbers made their escape was realistic and suitably exciting. A lot of attention was obviously paid to the costumes and look of the actors but somehow the characters were a little bit on the bland side. I'm not entirely sure if this was down to the casting of the actors themselves or just lacklustre writing but, either way, I started to worry that this was going to be as bad as "Fort Doom" (also from 2004) which was set in the same time period.

But then things started to get creepy. On reaching the deserted plantation which would become the robbers' hideout and setting for the rest of the events, everything changed into something that H.P. Lovecraft would have been proud of and therein lies a problem. On the one hand there were some great effects, jump scares and atmosphere but, on the other, there were also a lot of times where everything lagged and nothing made a great deal of sense.

Some reviewers have pointed out that "Dead Birds" is very derivative of "The Evil Dead". It's easy to see what they mean as both stories share the basic idea of a group of people trapped in a house where demons have been summoned previously but "Dead Birds" has a lot more of a ghost story feel to it. I wish that it had actually been a ghost story rather than going for gory effects and demons as it might have worked better. It was all a bit incoherent at times and reminded me of Japanese horror. I noticed that the backstory had to be explained three times as well which would have been unnecessary if there had been better writing to begin with.

As I said, "Dead Birds" isn't a completely awful film but it really does have a lot of flaws which are largely to do with the pacing and lack of charisma of any of the actors. Henry Thomas' performance as the leader was very weak and he was totally eclipsed by Nicki Aycox in any scene he shared with her. They've both done a lot of TV work and horror before but only Nicki Aycox seemed to be really into this and did a great job with what she had to work with. Michael Shannon was completely wasted in his role too. Really if you are going to use actors of this calibre you should at least give them something to get their teeth into and cast them appropriately.

The rating for "Dead Birds" on the IMDb is currently way too high at 5.7 out of 10. It's actually worth half of that because it had a lot of potential but ultimately failed to deliver on any level. It wasn't gory enough, wasn't scary enough, was overambitious as a "thinking man's horror" and mostly made a mess of following tried and tested formulas. I still enjoyed some of it, but it isn't a film that I'd want to watch again.