The Open House (2018)

Based on the handful of reviews available, I'm pretty sure I liked this more than most who saw it, and I didn't like it. The Open House draws inspiration from various horror subgenres, including haunted house, home invasion, and slashers. Until the end, the movie leaves you in the dark as to which direction (or directions) it's going to break. The conclusion feels like they just picked one out of a hat and went with it, ultimately delivering a film about the existential terror of [checks notes] okay, it's actually just about open houses. Like, having strangers come to your house. That's it. 

Perhaps I'm being a bit uncharitable, but for all the setup surrounding being haunted by trauma, fear of rural communities, and family strife, the movie just sort of reveals its big idea was just the obvious one in the title. Some random stranger we never see clearly was in the house all along. Somehow. We never really get much of an explanation on the logistics, just the idea. 

Most likely this was envisioned as an homage to Black Christmas. The situation and characters are very different, but to the extent the ending is attempting anything, it seems like it's trying to create the same sort of urban legend that Black Christmas implied. And of course there's the same setting: Christmas. 

Well, there's sort of Christmas. The movie occasionally reminds you it's set sometime near Christmas, possibly over Christmas break (since the high school-aged lead is able to miss a week or two of school without it mattering). We get decorations when they go into town, and there's a little holiday music once in a while, but it's not front-and-center in the narrative or design.

The compliment component of the backhanded compliment in the opening sentence above concerns the movie's stylistic and technical elements. Simply put, the individual scenes are competently directed and shot. Take more or less any sequence out of context, and you'd be fooled into thinking you were watching a scene from a relatively good horror flick. Because of this, it's not unpleasant to watch, at least not until you reach the last act and start to realize there's not much payoff coming.

In the off-chance anyone wants to watch this following all that, here's where you'd want to stop reading before I spoil the twists I haven't already spoiled. That being said, this absolutely isn't a movie I'd recommend, not because it's awful but because it's so unsatisfying.

The movie opens by introducing us to three of its two leads: Logan, a high school track star with dreams of running in the Olympics, and his mother, Naomi. His father dies pretty quickly in front of Logan's eyes, leaving Naomi in debt. Fortunately, her sister has an extra house they can use for a while. The only catch is it's on the market, so they need to leave once a week for the OPEN HOUSE. 

How dramatic.

On the way to the house, they almost hit a guy in the road, but he vanishes. Is this the movie's antagonist? Probably! Does it ever come up again or matter? Nope! 

They arrive at the house, and weird things start occurring, most of which turn out to be red herrings. The neighbor, an aging woman who may or may not have lost her husband, is a bit too friendly and may be harboring secrets (though apparently not). Chris, a local shop clerk (or perhaps owner) seems interested in the house, Naomi, or both. Is he harboring secrets? No! He's just a nice guy and will eventually get murdered! Are the cops who show up later and don't find anything amiss concealing evidence of a satanic cult? I kind of wish they'd gone with that cliche instead, but no! Same goes for the occasionally creepy realtors: they're just doing their job!

So what's going on in the house? Well, first there's missing or moved stuff. And the gas water heater keeps getting turned off while Naomi is in the shower, which results in an instantly freezing shower, because no one working on this movie seems to understand how water heaters work. There are also occasionally strange sounds.

So, you know, weird, mostly normal house stuff. This is relatable enough (houses are, in fact, weird). It's just a question of how this is all going to be paid off. 

First, we've got to talk about the other stuff. Logan is dealing with the trauma of seeing his dad run over in front of him. Naomi is trying to manage the stress of everything happening. And when events start implying Logan might be behind the weird stuff, they fight. 

When the house is clearly broken into, they call the cops, who search the place and assure them it's probably kids. Logan begs his mom to take them to a motel, but they don't have the money. He calls Chris, who agrees to spend the night on the couch, though... he definitely doesn't last that long. Because Logan was right: there's a killer hiding among them. Somehow. I think he had a secret room in the basement, maybe, but if the movie confirmed this, I missed it.

The killer knocks Logan unconscious and pours water over him, but doesn't kill him yet. Then he tortures Naomi and takes her to the basement. Logan follows then accidentally stabs his mom, who presumably dies. Logan runs into the woods, where the killer finds him the next morning and strangles him. 

I should note that until then, it seems like the killer was setting things up to imply Logan committed these crimes. Hell, it really seemed like Logan was going to die of hypothermia, so the decision to have the killer murder him was an odd one. I think even these cops will be able to figure out he didn't strangle himself.

At the end, the killer drives towards another "Open house" sign, presumably to do it all again.

You're ultimately left feeling like you watched something that forgot to include much of a point. There's little to its themes more engrossing than "beware of strangers" and "houses are creepy," and from a story standpoint the movie kills its leads without bothering to resolve their arcs. I guess that's surprising, in that it's surprising the movie didn't have a proper ending.

The holiday aspects here are relatively muted. This is set around Christmas, but it's more an intermittent background detail than a driving force for the film. As I mentioned earlier, there's a similarity between Black Christmas and what this is attempting: I wouldn't be surprised if that was the reason behind the setting. You could draw parallels between this and Christmas ghost stories, but honestly that feels like a stretch. By virtue of being set at Christmas, I'd argue this is a holiday film, but it's at most a minor aspect of the movie.

While I suspect this wanted to be another Black Christmas, it's closer to the 2012 horror movie, ATM, which also sets out to create a sort of Christmas movie urban legend. And like ATM, this falls flat. I'll grant one of the reasons Black Christmas endures is because of it's unexplained antagonist, but without strong characters and both cultural and political context, it wouldn't have worked. While I'd have preferred Black Christmas offer a more coherent message, its themes exploring misogyny serve as a foundation for the rest. The Open House offers none of that. It briefly raises issues connected to trauma and class but doesn't explore them meaningfully, let alone connect them to the killer. Likewise, the characters aren't interesting, and their arcs aren't concluded. 

While there's some decent direction and acting here, the movie is more an exercise in filmmaking than a complete movie. This thing was written, directed, and produced by Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote, and - to their credit - they prove they're capable of filming something that looks professional with what I'm guessing wasn't much money. But if this is indicative of their work, they'd be better off working with someone else's script in the future.