Monday, January 22, 2018

The Open House Netflix Movie Review

The Open House (2018)
Watch The Open House on Netflix
Written by: Matt Angel, Suzanne Coote
Directed by: Matt Angel, Suzanne Coote
Starring: Dylan Minnette, Piercey Dalton, Patricia Bethune
Rated: TV-MA
Watch the trailer 

Plot
A teenager and his mother find themselves besieged by threatening forces when they move into a new house.

Verdict
This is a complete waste of time. The movie stops without a conclusion. We get no answers and that's after having watched the characters make incredibly dumb decisions continuously. It's a movie that will make you mad at just how bad it is. You're likely to double check to make sure there really isn't a final scene, but do yourself a favor and don't even start this.
Skip it.

Review
This is the tired premise of a family terrorized in a new house. After losing his father, Logan and his mom move temporarily to a family friend's house that's currently for sale. Even the setup of losing his father was strained. His dad parks around the back of the store for no good reason.  A convenience story is supposed to conveniently save time. Why park around back and walk all the way around to the front? What's the worst way to set up a hit and run? This movie nails that.

The possible scenarios quickly become either Logan imagining this or sleepwalking, an actual person that hid in the home during an open house, or some strange town conspiracy. This delivers a lot of horror tropes without exploring them. There is a creepy blocked up tunnel in the basement we see once towards the beginning of the movie that is never acknowledged again. Why present the tunnel and never revisit it? If has no purpose whatsoever (much like this movie).

This ghost or person really likes to switch off the hot water heater. Logan and his mom in various states of undress will investigate the problem. Eventually they call a repair man and he says nothing is wrong with it. How creepy.

There is one good scene in this with the 'being' in bed with the mom. When she realizes what's going on this turns violent. This guy, I'm assuming this is no longer a ghost as multiple people have now seen him and his results, starts breaking the mother's fingers. It's violent for no good reason.

The villain's motives are never revealed. The villain isn't revealed. Who wrought all this damage? We have no idea. We're never given a single reason. I was hoping for an ending that would give this some sense of meaning or at least partially salvage this. I thought I missed the ending somehow. The last few scenes that should poorly conclude this don't exist. What a waste of time. This was bad from the start, but removing the ending in what I assume is an effort to provide some mystery because what was shot was so bad as to be unusable is inexcusable.

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