Thursday, November 26, 2009

JA Gives Thanks...

... for the weirdly discomfiting scene at the pizza place early on in Ti West's terrific horror-throwback The House of the Devil. It cements everything that the film does so well, from the uncannily spot-on period detail to the off-kilter hum of dread throbbing below the most banal of surfaces. Greasy pizza will murder us all!


Plus Greta Gerwig's hairstyle is just flippin' rad.
.
[Editor's Note: the official site says this is now available VOD if you're curious]

4 comments:

Carl Joseph Papa said...

i loved the feel of this movie. so retro. and so horrifying

NATHANIEL R said...

i don't understand how to watch it online.

i've been to the website and everything.

sometimes i am dumb.

(i was going to at least watch the pizza scene!)

Jason Adams said...

I'm curious if/how the scene would play out of context. The scenes before it set up the mood pretty well, that is very very very slow and very very much a product of the films it's riffing on. It's kind of like Grindhouse but without any winking at all. I wonder at all if/how the film plays for people who haven't spent a good portion of their lives soaking in bad 80s horror movies. For those of us who have, it's a treat, but I really do think it would work fine on its own if one's okay with being patient. Anyway Nat I think this is a horror movie you could probably watch. There is some violence but nothing worse than you might see in say a Coen brothers movie. Mostly I just think it's a highly effective mood piece and it lingers on the brain really really well. And there's just something about the pizza scene, the way it sets up these characters and makes you really care about them, that's lovely and simple and sticks in your brain. If you can't tell I really dug this film. /ramble

BrianZ said...

This made my day!