The subject of grief has found its way into some of the most successful horror movies of the last few years: The Babadook focused on the stress and anxiety of single parenthood following the loss of a spouse; Hereditary examined the wild fluctuations of the grief process and how the fallout of death is cross-generational; and The Eyes of My Mother harnessed post-traumatic stress and profound loss to create one of the best and creepiest neo-gothic tales in recent memory. Our House attempts to assert itself among this flock by using a haunted house as a metaphor for the dangers of unprocessed grief, telling the story of three orphaned kids who discover a way to communicate with their recently deceased parents.
A supernatural chiller with a Spielbergian streak, Our House stars Thomas Mann as Ethan, a preternaturally brilliant college student aiming to invent a device that would bring Nikola Tesla’s vision of wireless electricity to an everyday reality. He’s forced to abandon his pursuits after his mom and dad die in a car crash and leave him to take care of his younger siblings Matt (Percy Hynes White) and Becca (Kate Moyer). But his ambition doesn’t lie dormant for long, and he eventually returns to his project, only to learn that his invention is more functional as a sort of bridge between our world and the spirit world. Soon, the kids are having visions of their parents, but Ethan writes it off with a rational explanation: “Our consciousness has a frequency, so that energy has to go somewhere when we die,” he posits, suggesting that the increased power to his device is boosting the “signal” left behind by their parents.
It isn’t until neighbor Tom (Robert B. Kennedy), a recent widower with some hidden secrets, gets involved that Ethan’s device is revealed to be less of a haunted ham radio and more of paranormal Pandora’s box. But Our House takes its time in getting there. The first two acts of the film mostly center on the festering turmoil between the siblings, punctuated by some spooky scenes of what may or may not be their dead parents creeping around their house, but these scenes don’t inspire terror as much an awed wonder. There are even notes of tenderness as the grief-stricken kids grow more and more accustomed to the unexplainable bumps in the night. The film goes a long way in proving that such warm-heartedness isn’t horror movie anathema — feelings of hope and comfort can exist within the genre, especially when they’re underlined with a prevailing sense of dread and unease, as they are here.
The central question offered by the script asks us to consider how far we’d go to bring back the ones we love, but the answer provided by the filmmakers isn’t quite as humanist or emotional as the question itself. As the third act rolls around, Our House accelerates in pace, transitioning from a low-key drama with supernatural touches to an outright horror romp that abandons its most intriguing themes and embraces a series of hackneyed genre tropes. The strong character interplay of the preceding plot takes a back seat to a series of set pieces derived from what are surely some of director Anthony Scott Burns’ favorite horror movies (Poltergiest, The Others and The Shining among them), none of which scenes are all that visually memorable or uniquely ambitious. But even though the film comes up short in the way of execution, Our House is full of ideas, making it a middling horror experience that deserves kudos for at least raising the kind of scenarios rarely seen in the genre.
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