Ahhh, the good old days, when men wore flannel, women had feathered hair, and every wrong in the world was blamed on Satan and his loyal minions that infested every city and town.  Mutilated cow?  Satan’s doing.  Missing cat?  Nabbed by Satan.  Babysitter dead?  Human sacrifice.

College student Samantha is tired of sharing a small, cramped dorm room with her vicarious, and messy, roommate.  She finds a nice little one bedroom apartment, and the landlady is kind enough to wave the deposit as long as she has the first month’s rent by the start of the week.  Samantha only has eighty-four of the three hundred dollars.  Now she starts to worry where to get the rest.  Her friend is from a wealthy family, but Samantha just doesn’t feel right about taking the hand-out.

So she worries some more, but then there’s a ray of hope.  Posted on a bulletin board at school is flyer for a family in need of a babysitter.  Samantha calls, and after some miscommunication and crossed wires, she is asked to babysit on short notice.  She agrees, but once she gets to the big old house in the middle of nowhere, things aren’t as cut and dry as she had believed.  The middle aged couple, Mr. and Mrs. Ulman, are a little weird.  In fact, they are downright creepy, and creepily excited about the eclipse that is to occur later that night.  And they don’t have a child; well, they do, but he’s grown.  They want Samantha to sit with Mrs. Ulman’s elderly mother.  The job seems quite simple, and Samantha will, seemingly, not have to do anything for the old woman.  After some haggling over the price, which will more than cover her rent, Samantha agrees to take the job.


After the Ulman’s leave, and Samantha is alone in the house, that’s when Samantha begins to suspect things really are not right.  Things like it might not be the Ulman’s house, and there may not be an old woman upstairs asleep.  But there does seem to be someone upstairs, or at least some thing up there, moving around.

The House of the Devil doesn’t rush to the violence, in fact it doesn’t rush at all, and that’s the beauty of it.  It moves languidly, though ultimately it ends up not being about too much.  It’s still a good movie though.  The Collector could have taken some notes from this movie on how to use one setting and how to build suspense without telling much of a story.  The big reveals aren’t too grand, and are easily deduced from the beginning (the title gives it all away); it’s the build up that pays off for The House of the Devil.

4 out of 5
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