Latest / Two Cents: We See Scary Movies / The House of the Devil (2009) – $400 for a Night of Hell

Transcript

The House of the Devil (2009) – $400 for a Night of Hell · Two Cents: We See Scary Movies

0:00
Welcome back to Two Cents. We see scary movies where we
0:03
trade common sense for horror sense and call it film analysis.
0:07
I'm Talon, the one who'd rather go broke than babysit in a house
0:10
that smells like mothballs and unbaptized energy.
0:13
And Dan, He's the guy who'd go check out the noise in the
0:16
basement just to see if the killer's doing it right.
0:19
This month's theme is not just another Halloween movie, because
0:22
October isn't just about masks, machetes, and that one
0:25
unstoppable guy who somehow survived more sequels than logic
0:29
should allow. And this week we're talking Ty
0:31
West's The House of the Devil, a slow burn descent into 1980s
0:35
Satanic Panic, back when every babysitter in horror was 1 bad
0:39
decision away from a blood ritual.
0:41
It's eerie, it's patient, and it's proof it's sometimes easy.
0:44
Money just means you're underpaid for the possession
0:47
that follows. We'll be breaking it down in
0:49
three parts, The job, the longest night ever, and the
0:51
ritual and the aftermath. So grab your Walkman, ignore
0:54
every survival instinct you've ever had, and let's head to the
0:57
creepiest babysitting gig ever put on film.
1:13
All righty, so we have Part 1, the job.
1:16
So we open up with a warning card that is basically saying,
1:19
hey, remember the 80s? Everyone thought Satan was
1:23
hiding under their couch cushions.
1:25
So right away we know Ty W, the director, is diving head first
1:30
into the Satanic panic error. The good old days, the music,
1:33
the clothes, even the ugly wallpaper.
1:35
It's pure 80s misery. Any of the fans that remember
1:39
the 80s, they remember all of that stuff.
1:42
I mean, I remember things that give me nightmares to this day.
1:46
And I'm just talking about the upholstery.
1:48
Right. So early on, we see news reports
1:54
about a rare total lunar eclipse that's about to happen,
1:57
culminating on Halloween night. And it's got that everybody
2:00
glued to their TV, you know, everybody's like, Oh my God, you
2:03
know, because again, back then, you know, there was no 24 hour
2:06
news cycle. There was no like constant
2:08
barrage of stuff. So, like, this was like actual
2:11
news. It says that's the stage, but
2:13
also quietly plans to see that this event needs more than a
2:17
science lesson. So much for Mr. Wizard.
2:20
Mr. Wizard, I forgot about him. Yeah, I like.
2:25
Throwing in those little details.
2:27
Yeah, he was pre Bill Nye. Yeah, absolutely.
2:30
Way back then. Yeah, I mean, he, Bill Nye
2:32
probably could have been one of the kids on the show.
2:34
Yeah, right. Totally.
2:36
All right, so we have Samantha Hughes that is introduced.
2:40
She's a broke college student played by Jocelyn Donohue.
2:43
She's wandering Campus County coins like she's auditioning for
2:46
depression era musical. 50 years old with my own house and I'm
2:50
still doing that. Rents due.
2:52
She's desperate and every phone she touches looks like it could
2:56
electrocute her. But for the younger folks, the
2:58
phone that they're referencing is a pay phone.
3:01
It used to be this little box that you would go and you put
3:04
like at first like $0.05 and then it went up to $0.10, then
3:08
it went up to $0.25. Right, that also reminds me of
3:11
Do you remember pay toilets? Yes.
3:14
Yes, I used to like Kmart and Ames.
3:17
Ames was a store back in the day.
3:18
They had pay toilets you put a dime in to go into the bathroom.
3:22
Yep. Right, so that's a good
3:24
explanation for the younger crowd, right?
3:26
Yeah. So she spots the babysitting ad
3:29
that's posted. And of course, because of a
3:31
horror movie, she does a logical thing.
3:33
And she obviously calls the creepy stranger on the ad.
3:37
We have Mr. Ullman, who answers the phone, and he sounds like a
3:40
very polite man. Definitely berries, bodies, sort
3:44
of energy. Yeah.
3:46
He offers a job, like, immediately He's like, yeah,
3:49
you're hired, man. You know, she's, like, all
3:51
excited about it. And, you know, as I recall, he
3:55
says that she's got to be at this particular pay phone at a
3:57
particular time. That whole thing happens, and
4:00
they miss each other and then they get back together.
4:02
And there was like, a little confusion of, oh, you know, do
4:05
you really want the job? Yeah, I really want the job.
4:07
I didn't know if you wanted me to have the job.
4:08
I mean. Samantha's friend Megan, played
4:12
by Greta Gerwig, tags along from all support.
4:15
She's the one friend who's all vibes and no caution in certain
4:19
circumstances. It doesn't mean she doesn't have
4:21
safety in mind, but you know, just kind of like a free flow
4:25
sort of person, which obviously makes her the perfect horror
4:29
side tick. They get to the house and it's
4:32
instantly Red Flag City. It's a huge mansion.
4:35
It's dark, it's isolated. Like, it's like far back in the
4:39
woods and like there's nobody else around.
4:40
And the people who own it, the almonds, they just have like
4:43
this really creepy smile that just slowly comes across their
4:48
face. He is slow.
4:50
Yeah. Mr. Allman, who's played by Tom
4:53
Newman Noonan rather, is tall and he is tall.
4:56
You know, if you, if you watch the movie, he's a very tall
5:00
individual, very tall and slender.
5:02
Yeah. Like Slender Man the most he
5:05
could play a slender man. That's why I started giggling.
5:07
I'm like, yeah, Slender Man. So he's soft spoken and he's
5:11
just UN suddenly calm. Like, you would think that he'd
5:13
be like a warm, welcoming sort of person.
5:15
No, this guy is like way too creepily calm.
5:19
Yeah. Misses Allman shows up acting
5:21
like she's auditioning for the Stepford Wives.
5:24
We come to the twist because there's some conversation and
5:27
there's not a lot going on here. You know, it's, it's one of
5:30
those movies that kind of brings you back to like, like the 60s
5:34
and the 70s, like the slow burn horror like Rosemary's Baby or,
5:38
or even the Exorcist without the Exorcist payoff, right?
5:42
Yeah, But it brings you back to those types of horror movies.
5:45
So in the in the discussions, I mean, it was just kind of slow
5:49
and dry in the beginning. So they just keep like referring
5:53
to the babysitting gig, but they don't really say what it is
5:57
right. Until Mr. Allman and Samantha
6:00
sit down together, They find out that there's no, the babysitting
6:04
job is just, you know, to watch over Mr. Ullman's elderly
6:08
mother-in-law who's just upstairs while they're talking.
6:11
You know, Samantha's like, yeah, no, I don't want to do that.
6:13
So Mr. Ullman pulls out, like, money.
6:16
And he's like, how about, you know, 100?
6:18
How about 200? How about 300?
6:20
He ends up pulling out $400.00 and all she's got to do is sit
6:23
in a chair all night. Yeah.
6:25
And, you know, there's, there's nothing weird about that at all.
6:27
You know, 400 bucks just to sit in a chair, I mean.
6:30
For four hours. Yeah, let's just throw cars,
6:33
throw cars into the wind. Yeah.
6:35
This is where Megan's safety thing comes into play.
6:38
She's calling it like it is. She's like, you know, this is
6:40
weird as hell, Samantha. She's thinking as a responsible,
6:44
broke college student would. Ignores every red flag known
6:48
that's being thrown at her and just takes the gig.
6:51
Anyway, that night right there, the first nail in the coffin,
6:55
her acceptance of the job. So, you know, it's kind of the
6:57
calm before the ritual. All right, so the pacing of this
7:01
movie, now I understand it is absolutely a slow burn, which I
7:04
liked. But for me, the pacing of the
7:07
1st 25 minutes where she's just, you know, walking around campus,
7:12
it's so slow. That part to me is not a slow
7:15
burn because when there's a slow burn, there's usually tension
7:19
that's a scary tension. Not I'm broke tension, not
7:23
anxiety because technically it starts off where she is in a
7:26
house that she's going to rent because she doesn't like her
7:28
messy annoying roommate. So she is going to rent this
7:32
house, which was a whole house for 300 bucks.
7:35
So it's like sweet nice. The lady offers it to her,
7:39
thinks she'll be a great tenant. She takes it.
7:41
She ends up hanging out with her friend and talking about it and
7:44
she's all worried because she has $82 and doesn't have a job.
7:48
It's like, why did you even think you could move in
7:50
somewhere? Like what?
7:52
Why would you get your own place?
7:53
But OK. No, it it's it's move in
7:56
consequences later. Right, right.
7:59
So she's all worried because she needs to give this woman $300.00
8:02
for the first month's rent by Monday, and it's Wednesday, so
8:05
that's when the babysitting ad comes in.
8:08
But the first 25 minutes is literally just her walking
8:12
around worried about having to pay rent.
8:14
And then there's the whole thing where she calls the guy and he's
8:17
like, oh, I'm going to pick you up.
8:18
Meet me at the, I don't know, student center or someplace.
8:21
Yeah, I. Think it was the student center,
8:22
yeah. Yeah, and she just sat there to
8:24
the point where she fell asleep on the steps and he never showed
8:27
up. Right.
8:28
But that's all it is. Like for the 1st 25 minutes to
8:30
me, there is nothing tense at all or anything about that part.
8:34
It kind of drove me crazy. If I weren't doing this movie
8:37
for this podcast, I would have absolutely turned it off.
8:41
I would not have kept watching it, which is unfortunate because
8:43
after they get to the house that's when the actual slow burn
8:46
tension comes into play for me. Is that that part?
8:49
And also just a quick mention in the beginning, the landlady is
8:53
Dee Wallace. Well, she's now I guess Dee
8:55
Wallace, but she used to be Dee Wallace Stone from Cujo fame and
8:59
many other movies. But that's, you know, where I
9:01
remember her most. But she had a quick cameo as the
9:03
landlady, but also had title credit like, and Dee Wallace was
9:08
in the when they were doing the credits at the beginning.
9:09
And I was like, she had five minutes like of whatever.
9:13
But yeah, I, I did not enjoy the 1st 25 minutes of this movie.
9:16
It was, they could have easily just shown that she got a house.
9:20
She was with her friend at the pizza parlor, worried about it,
9:23
maybe see her annoying roommate if you need to, I don't know.
9:25
But then they could just have left and gone to town.
9:27
Or she did. She answered the babysitter ad
9:29
and then they left and went to the house.
9:31
That would have been enough. They probably could have cut at
9:33
least half of it. Oh yeah, totally, You know. 12
9:36
minutes, 12 1/2 minutes. And then called it good because
9:40
I think in that respect, the way the story was being set up,
9:45
think 12 minutes. Yeah.
9:47
I mean, I know 12 minutes is like an odd, like, number to
9:49
throw out there, right? Saying, like, cut it in half.
9:51
Yeah. That they could have told all of
9:53
that within that time frame. It just felt like there was some
9:57
repetitiveness. Yeah.
9:58
Parts where they kept on missing each other.
10:02
Yeah. I didn't like that.
10:03
Yeah, that was pointless. It took away from from the
10:06
movie. I mean, I can see what he was
10:09
trying to do, trying to set up like there might be some
10:12
hesitancy on both sides. But the way it was done, I just
10:17
didn't like how how that whole thing transpired because, you
10:21
know, kids waiting out at the students.
10:23
That guy doesn't show he ghosts her right before ghosting was a
10:27
thing. Yeah, exactly.
10:29
And, you know, she's missing phone calls at pay phones.
10:33
And he's just very like, you know, because the thing he
10:36
doesn't give her a time frame to go meet her, just like meet me
10:39
at the student center. She's like how?
10:40
And he hangs up on her. You.
10:44
Know yeah so they could have totally done without all of that
10:47
they could have definitely cut that in half.
10:49
I did like though even from the very beginning I loved the way
10:53
it was shot definitely. I literally, it felt like I was
10:56
watching a movie from back early 80s at least, maybe something in
11:01
the 70s. It definitely had that feel to
11:03
it, which was really nice. And it was funny because as I
11:06
was looking at people who were in the cast, I was like, gosh, I
11:09
was thinking, oh, these people are probably, you know, 50 some
11:11
years old now. Right.
11:14
And they're not, but it so it did have a really cool feel to
11:17
it. He shot it really well.
11:18
Yeah, because I think the movie came out I think originally in
11:21
2009 maybe. Yeah, somewhere in there.
11:24
Yeah. Another thing I wanted to
11:26
mention was she had her friend drive her to the house.
11:28
She doesn't have a car, and her friend wanted to stay.
11:31
And the old man, when he answered, you could tell he was
11:33
a little like put off by the fact that she had someone with
11:35
her. Yeah, you have a friend?
11:38
Great, you're ruining everything and so.
11:42
Thanks for ruining the threesome.
11:46
Now it's going to be a foursome. Fantastic.
11:48
They go inside, they're talking and the friend's asking a lot of
11:52
questions that he's not answering, by the way.
11:54
She keeps asking him what he does for work and he keeps
11:57
changing the topic basically. But then he's like, Samantha,
12:00
can I talk to you privately? So they go off to the kitchen.
12:03
Basically. He just says I don't have enough
12:05
money to pay 2 babysitters. And she's like, oh, she's like,
12:08
she's leaving, she's just dropping off because I have a
12:10
car. And then they go through the
12:11
whole OK, I don't have a baby, I have a old lady that I need you
12:16
to watch, but she doesn't do anything.
12:17
So it'll be 4 hours of just watching TV.
12:20
It won't be a big deal. And then she was like, I don't
12:22
know anything about taking care of old people, blah blah, blah.
12:24
He's like, no really she's she can get around on her own.
12:26
She's fine. He's like, I'll double it.
12:28
So that makes it $100. But they end up she's like
12:30
$400.00. And I'm like, wait, so he can
12:33
pay you $400.00 for four hours to watch his mother-in-law, but
12:38
he can't pay 2 babysitters $50 a piece?
12:42
Maybe. Like, what?
12:44
That wasn't a red flag to you? Like you didn't think?
12:46
Well, that's weird. Yeah.
12:48
So exactly. That's where we find out why he
12:50
was being so secretive, like on the phone and stuff.
12:53
It's like, you know, a lot of a lot of babysitters, once they
12:56
find out what I need, they end up leaving and I'm really
12:59
desperate to have somebody here. Yeah, yeah.
13:02
This would be also had the saying 2 shakes of a lamb's
13:06
tail, which was in Clovis killer because when he went to go
13:09
upstairs to get his wife, he was like I'll be right back in two
13:12
shakes of a lamb's tail and I was like, oh, this is what
13:15
creepy guys say. I guess this is the creepy guy
13:19
slogan. I was like, right?
13:21
Right, creepy guy slogan. All righty.
13:25
So now we're in Part 2. The longest night ever.
13:29
So now we're in full. What could possibly go wrong
13:31
mode? I don't know.
13:35
The omens left, the house is creaking and Samantha's
13:38
officially the world's highest paid non babysitter.
13:41
Right? Especially for the 80s.
13:43
I mean $400.00 in the 80s. I mean, you're talking like the
13:47
equivalents of a couple 1000. Yeah, I mean, even like the 50
13:50
bucks he originally was going to pay her was a pretty decent
13:52
amount, right? Yeah, you know, because, I mean,
13:55
you look at inflation and all that shit.
13:56
I mean, 50 bucks was a lot of money back then, right?
13:59
She wanders the house, trying to convince herself she's fine.
14:02
I'm fine, I'm good. Everything's fine.
14:04
You're fine. We're all fine.
14:06
The camera practically breathes down her neck the whole time,
14:09
like it's just like right on top of her and it looks like the
14:12
house is watching her. The fridge, Homs, like it's a
14:15
like it's judging her life choices.
14:16
Doors open themselves, and the only phone that works is
14:19
possessed by Verizon's demonic cousin.
14:22
Let's see, what was that AT&T? Yeah, well, Bell Atlantic back
14:26
in that day. Oh.
14:27
Yes, Bell Atlantic. That's right.
14:29
There's a locked door near the basement that won't budget.
14:32
And we all know that's where evil lives.
14:34
You know, we saw it in the deep house, the the locked, blocked
14:38
door. There's nothing ever good that's
14:41
behind the locked, blocked door, especially if it's going to the
14:44
basement. Right.
14:46
So the door won't budget. She's still poking around after
14:49
she couldn't open the door. And you know, it's kind of like
14:51
House Hunters Hell edition. Mr. Allman had been almost
14:55
insistent that she order pizza earlier.
14:57
Like he was very creepily like wanting her to order pizza.
15:01
And he kept doing it in a very non nonchalant way though, like
15:04
oops, I did I mention that already?
15:06
Oops. Yeah, yeah.
15:07
Better not be Papa John's though.
15:09
No, he mentioned it 3 or 4 times, you know, before leaving.
15:14
Being the good babysitter she is, she finally orders the
15:17
pizza, thinking that it'll make everything feel a little bit
15:21
more normal. And then what's going on?
15:23
She kills some time by dancing through the house to one thing
15:26
leads to another by the fix, and she's blissfully unaware that
15:30
one thing absolutely will lead to another.
15:32
Something in horror movies like they never think about these
15:35
things. They call, you know, this one
15:36
creepy thing. Yeah, may lead to this creepy
15:40
thing, may lead to this creepy thing.
15:42
It's like, oh, this creepy thing.
15:44
We'll just forget about it. And I was just going to be all
15:46
Snow White and funding games. And then you still see like, you
15:49
see another creepy thing. You're like and then another
15:51
creepy thing, and you don't realize that you now have 10 or
15:53
12 creepy things, but you're still disregarding all of them.
15:56
Right. So meanwhile, Megan's still
15:59
chilling in the car. I believe she's driven a little
16:01
ways away from the house, but she's still still, like, near
16:04
the property. Yeah.
16:06
A random guy just walks up and he's like, I use a babysitter.
16:09
And before she can even blink. Boom.
16:12
There's a quick, fast headshot. Yeah, it's a pretty brutal shock
16:16
too. Yeah, it was good.
16:17
It was pretty sure it's Ty Westway of saying no one is
16:20
safe, not even Greta Gerwig. Who was not 50?
16:24
Who was not 50? Yeah.
16:26
But yeah, I mean, it was a, it was a brutal headshot.
16:28
It really was. I was not expecting it at all.
16:31
Yeah. And honestly, I didn't, I didn't
16:34
realize that that was part of the pizza delivery service
16:37
because he, you know, ends up being the pizza delivery guy.
16:40
Right, pizza delivery is rough, I'm just saying.
16:45
So he brings the pizza to Samantha.
16:47
Samantha eats a few bites, starts feeling a little strange,
16:50
and then realizes that the pizza was drugged.
16:53
Her vision blurs, her limbs give out, and she collapses to the
16:57
floor just as the lunar eclipse reaches its peak outside.
17:01
And that's the tipping point. We're done with dread and we're
17:04
heading straight into hell. Right.
17:06
So in this part, and do you want to talk about the Walkman?
17:09
Because I was a cassette Walkman, I don't know.
17:13
It instantly took me back, like I felt like I I because again,
17:17
this movie, the way it shot, definitely felt very 80s.
17:20
But I haven't seen a cassette Walkman in years.
17:22
Decades, probably. No, I mean those things are are
17:24
bulky. Yeah.
17:26
And I was like, oh God, that's so fantastic.
17:28
I totally missed that. I mean, I just missed even the
17:31
sound of it when she was putting the tape in.
17:34
That sound was so nostalgic. Yes.
17:37
I was like, yeah, I was like, God, that feels really good.
17:42
It just felt great. I I like, I loved it.
17:44
Well, I mean it, it's like I love like MP threes and the
17:47
clear sound, but every once in a while I I love listening to that
17:51
the record crack. Right.
17:53
Oh yeah, Yeah. Cracks and pops.
17:55
Yeah, yeah, that's really a nice all of it.
17:58
It's just that nostalgic sounds that it feeling it gives you,
18:02
right. So the scene where Megan gets
18:05
shot, the first time I watched it, I did not remember what the
18:09
heck was going on. Like she was supposed to stay,
18:12
but then of course she had to leave because Samantha was like,
18:15
oh, he can't, you know, pay more than one babysitter because he's
18:18
paying me 400 bucks. So.
18:20
So she goes and leaves. She's not happy about it.
18:23
She's pissed off. She thinks it's weird.
18:24
She takes off and there's a cemetery.
18:27
I don't know if it's on the property or just adjacent to the
18:30
property, but she just drives down and pulls into the
18:33
cemetery. Which what?
18:35
That's a horrible idea from the get go.
18:38
Like what are you thinking? Yeah, No.
18:41
Are you? Pulling into that.
18:42
I mean, it's dark out, zombies live there.
18:44
Right. And we're gonna have an eclipse.
18:46
Come on now. Right.
18:48
Do you know you're not? You realize that you're in a
18:51
horror movie? Come on, girl.
18:54
I mean, that's what you signed up for.
18:56
Right, right. So she pulls into the cemetery
18:59
to and I'm assuming that she's because they lived, it felt like
19:02
they lived a decent amount of time away and she was only going
19:04
to be there for four hours. So she probably was like, I'm
19:07
not actually going to leave, leave.
19:08
I'm just going to pull into the cemetery and sit in the cemetery
19:10
for four hours and smoke cigarettes.
19:12
So she pulls in, she tries to light a cigarette doesn't work.
19:15
All of a sudden that guy shows up and he offers her a light.
19:18
He seems fine or whatever. Everything seems normal.
19:21
And then she's gets kind of, she gets a little snippy with him
19:25
and he's like, aren't you the babysitter?
19:27
And she's like, no, I'm not the baby.
19:28
And then as soon as she, before she can finish the sentence,
19:30
bam, like, gone. And I was like, whoa, I I just
19:33
was not expecting that at all. I was like, OK, so she's dead.
19:36
And then he ends up getting into the car and taking her
19:39
cigarette. Finish it.
19:41
Yeah. I thought that was kind of.
19:43
Fun, you don't want to waste the cigarette.
19:44
No, God, those are well, they weren't expensive back in the
19:47
day. They are now.
19:48
But maybe he was just anticipating inflation.
19:51
I don't know. The other scene, that guy.
19:53
Then later on, because during this whole middle section of the
19:56
movie, she's running around just looking at different things in
20:00
the house. She has the whole dance scene,
20:01
which was a fun little scene. I like the music.
20:04
I like the music in this movie. She ends up bumping into a vase
20:08
and knocks that off and breaks it.
20:09
And I was like, well, there goes your 400 bucks, right?
20:13
Something. Damn.
20:15
Super glue ain't fixing. That I know that's what I was
20:17
thinking. I was like, why are when you're
20:19
sweeping it up and throwing it away?
20:20
I would do everything possible to put that shit back together
20:22
and hopefully never notice until I'm gone gone, gone.
20:26
Paper mache that shit. Right.
20:28
Something. So then she opens a closet and
20:31
she sees some pictures which they never really go into, but I
20:34
guess it kind of gives you the idea that the pictures were
20:36
people you didn't really know that weren't in the movie.
20:39
So I kind of guess gave you the idea that maybe somebody else
20:42
used to live in this house or this was their house and for
20:45
some reason they're not there anymore and these people are
20:48
here and and in her looking around, she also does.
20:51
And this confused the fuck out of me.
20:53
I had to rewind it three times because I was like, what is
20:56
going on? Because she gets to a door and
21:00
she almost opens it but doesn't. And she says something like
21:03
hello or you OK, Because I think it was supposed to be the mother
21:07
in Then the camera like, passes through the door and goes in
21:11
that room and you see a bunch of bodies on the floor.
21:14
Yeah. Then she turns around and walks
21:16
off and just does whatever. And I'm like, you're not
21:18
running, you're not freaking out.
21:20
It took me forever to realize she never opened the door.
21:23
Yeah, yeah. So I was like, why is she not
21:25
freaking out? This is a clear sign.
21:26
This is a clear sign. This is creepy sign #10 like,
21:31
why are you not freaking out? But it took me a while.
21:33
But she's just, you know, going around and she finds a pool
21:36
table. She plays a pool, she does a
21:38
bunch of stuff. But there's also creepiness
21:39
going on that kind of stops her in her tracks a couple of times.
21:43
So there is tension building throughout this middle section.
21:47
She also tries calling her friend, and her friend's not
21:49
answering because of course, her friend didn't go home.
21:51
And also her friend's dead. But she.
21:53
Doesn't know that. Yet.
21:54
Yeah, she doesn't know that yet. But she doesn't also doesn't
21:56
know that her friend just stopped down the street and
21:58
didn't go home anyway. So she does that, and then of
22:01
course she calls for the pizza. The guy that kills her friend
22:04
also ends up delivering the pizza.
22:06
Shitty pizza guy. She's Little Caesars needs to
22:10
hire better like they need to do better background checks.
22:13
Right. So before he rings the doorbell,
22:15
she's been running around the house and she keeps hearing all
22:18
these weird noises and she's getting more and more creeped
22:21
out. She's she has grabbed a knife
22:23
and she's walking around with this knife.
22:24
The way it's set up, it's almost like she's freaking herself out
22:28
like this is an old house. It's creepy.
22:31
It's, you know, got creaking noises and old houses settle and
22:34
shit. Unless you've got grandma or
22:36
whoever it is upstairs that's might be, you know, moving
22:39
around. So she's kind of creating fear
22:43
in her head. It almost seems like the way
22:46
it's building up, even though there is shit going on, it
22:48
almost feels like she's kind of doing it to herself.
22:50
So she's freaking herself out. So at one point she's in a kind
22:54
of almost frantic state and the doorbell rings, but it's like an
22:58
old doorbell that's like that weird.
23:00
It's really loud. Like it's a super loud doorbell,
23:03
so it's jarring. So she's like, oh, pizza.
23:06
So she runs, grabs the 20 bucks. This piece is $8.
23:09
She opens the door, throws the $20.00 at the guy and says keep
23:13
the change. Grabs the pizza, slams the door
23:15
shut, turns around, plumps down on the floor and from the door
23:18
and she's holding the pizza box vertically.
23:21
I was like. That girl.
23:24
Pizza's going to be a fucking disaster.
23:27
I was like, wait, but apparently it maybe it got, maybe it took a
23:30
long time for him to get there because it ended up being fine.
23:32
Maybe it was gotten cold enough to where it wasn't going to
23:34
slide everywhere. But yeah, 'cause she did end up
23:37
eating a couple slices of pizza, which tasted horrible to her, so
23:40
she threw it out. Drink a bunch of water.
23:43
So I'm I'm thinking because you really don't get a good view of
23:48
the dead people's faces, I am wondering if the photo was the
23:53
precursor to them, that maybe that was them in the photos.
23:57
That's what I was thinking too. And that the almond, like you
24:00
said, like the almonds didn't really live there.
24:02
It just. Happened to be that they're
24:04
there now. Yeah, somehow they managed to
24:07
take over this house and somewhere, right?
24:09
Yeah, that's strange all. Righty, so that's moving forward
24:13
Part 3, the ritual and the aftermath.
24:16
So Samantha wakes up on the floor and she's in the middle of
24:19
a giant pentagram, candle, symbols, the whole satanic
24:23
starter kit, right? You know some websites you can
24:25
go to buy it all in bulk. The eclipse is in full swing
24:28
outside, casting the world in blood red darkness.
24:32
The almonds are back, dressed in ceremonial robes.
24:35
And that random guy, the one who shot Megan and delivered the
24:39
pizza? He's there too.
24:41
Now we see that this is the almond son.
24:44
Then the so-called mother-in-law appears.
24:47
Whatever she is, she's barely human.
24:49
Her face looks like a dried apple with teeth.
24:51
She slits her own wrists. Less the blood drain into a
24:54
goat's skull. And the almonds poured into
24:57
Samantha's mouth while chanting their creepy ritual verses,
25:00
bracing against the clock to finish before the eclipse
25:02
passes. That must not taste good after
25:05
eating. I had pizza that's.
25:07
Not what I want to cleanse my mouth with, yeah.
25:10
It's chaos and dread, but Smith isn't going down quietly.
25:13
She's able to break free. She jabs the Sun's eye with her
25:17
thumb and kills Missus Allman before escaping the house.
25:20
She does end up getting shot in the arm by the Sun a little
25:23
earlier, but she still is able to get his gun away from him and
25:27
gets on the way out. So she's stumbling outside and
25:30
she goes into the graveyard. Silence is everywhere compared
25:34
to what was just happening. We see the shadow of the eclipse
25:36
above. Mr. Ullman is like right behind
25:38
her, you know, still calm, you know, just following her, but
25:41
still very calm. He's telling her, oh, you know,
25:44
it's too late. She points the gun at him,
25:46
shaking, then turns it on herself, refusing to give them
25:49
whatever it is they wanted. He's freaking out like, oh,
25:51
well, not freaking out. I mean, as freaking out as a
25:54
calm, like a calm man can be. He's like, oh please don't.
25:59
Yeah, don't. You don't know what you're
26:01
doing. It's fine.
26:02
So so she ends up turning the gun on herself and you know,
26:06
bang and she falls over and he's sad because he can't finish his
26:10
little ceremony. So now we're in the hospital.
26:13
We see Samantha unconscious in a bed, and Nurse leans over,
26:17
smiles and says softly, you're going to be fine.
26:20
Then she touches Samantha's stomach.
26:22
You're both going to be fine. What?
26:27
That's when it hits. The ritual worked.
26:29
The spot of Satan is officially on its way.
26:32
Yeah, Now in this section, the one thing that I found most
26:36
interesting was they used a real non 555 phone number.
26:42
Did you notice? No, I did not.
26:44
Yeah, on the phone, because she used the phone again in this
26:46
section because Mr. Allman gave her a phone number to call in
26:49
case there was an emergency and that she had to contact them.
26:52
They have, of course, the hanging on the wall phone.
26:54
That's a Rotary phone. And in the middle of a Rotary
26:57
phone is a big circle that usually had your phone number on
26:59
it. So when she called them, it
27:02
showed that space and it was a real phone number.
27:05
And I looked at the area code and it's a New York phone
27:08
number. And I don't.
27:10
And, you know, I didn't call it, but you know, people, I'm sure
27:12
someone somewhere must have caught that.
27:16
Yeah, probably try calling that number.
27:17
But I thought that was interesting because typically
27:19
whenever you have any movie, TV show with a phone number, it's
27:22
always 555 and then whatever. Yeah, and some other like random
27:26
number or something fake. Yeah, yeah.
27:29
So you can't call it it, it doesn't exist.
27:31
Typically when you do have a real number in a movie or ATV
27:35
show, it is because they want you to call it and there's some
27:38
other like there's something to it.
27:39
So I didn't call, but I thought that was interesting that they
27:42
had a real phone number there in that section.
27:45
But yeah, it picks up the pace real quick at the end.
27:48
Like it goes from super slow burn to once she is drugged and,
27:54
you know, start and falls asleep or whatever knocks out.
27:57
From that point on it's boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
28:00
Like they, they tie it up quick 'cause they go through.
28:03
Next thing you know, she's awake on the floor tied down with all
28:05
this shit around her and creepy old lady has a goat's head and
28:10
she put some blood, a blood pentagram or whatever on her
28:13
stomach and then writes AW or something on her head.
28:17
I don't know what that was for, you know, you're into this
28:20
stuff. What is that?
28:21
Well, I don't know what AW is, you know, winner.
28:25
I don't know. Now, I thought they were just
28:30
going to sacrifice her. It didn't dawn on me at all that
28:33
they they were trying to impregnate her.
28:35
I don't know why, because that's typically the way it happens,
28:38
but it's either a blood sacrifice or a baby or one of
28:41
the two or a virgin sacrifice, whatever.
28:43
But we didn't try. We didn't try to figure out if
28:45
she was a virgin. Like there was nothing.
28:47
About that, it just felt like it was just going to be a plain old
28:50
sacrifice. Yeah, like that's why I thought,
28:53
that's why I didn't think it was going to be a baby.
28:55
I just thought, oh, it was a regular sacrifice.
28:56
Once the lady starts dripping all this fucking blood in her
29:01
mouth, she's like, I'm out. She gets the strength of the
29:05
Hulk and she's like ripping herself out of the things and
29:09
getting up. And she does somehow, and I
29:11
don't know where she got it. I don't know what it was, but
29:15
she did stab Mr. Allman. She stabbed him.
29:18
And then the son starts wrestling with her and she pokes
29:21
her thumb into his eye. And of course he's like, oh, she
29:24
poked me in the eye. And that's right, Owie.
29:30
And so she runs off, she gets out out out of that area and she
29:33
goes running upstairs. Like, why are you running
29:37
upstairs? I just don't understand.
29:38
It's just what you do when you're scared, you just run
29:40
upstairs. Makes me crazy but.
29:42
And of course when she goes through the house to get to the
29:45
staircase which she could have just gone through the front door
29:48
because it was right there. The only problem I guess would
29:50
be that her friend was laying there in the middle of the floor
29:53
because they brought her friend in and her face is blown off and
29:57
there's blood everywhere. So she slips through all of
29:59
that. Then she runs up the stairs and
30:01
then the sun runs up the other staircase because they both meet
30:04
at the top and he has a gun. And this later on after I
30:07
watched the ending and once we got to the ending and I was
30:10
like, wait, because he shot her, but he shot her in the shoulder.
30:14
Of course, she falls and she's in pain and whatever, but she's
30:16
not dead. He just shot her in the arm
30:17
somewhere. And then he gets above her like
30:19
he's going to shoot her to kill her, which doesn't make sense
30:23
because the dad didn't want her dead.
30:25
So I don't know, maybe he was just pissy and was like, wow,
30:27
we'll just start over and we'll do with somebody else.
30:30
And, you know, and then she has a knife.
30:34
I don't know where she got the knife, but she has that knife
30:36
and she is laying on the floor and he's up standing up and she
30:40
just reaches her arm out and slashes across and happens to
30:44
somehow manage to get his neck. That was a stretch, I thought,
30:47
but maybe she was literally stretching, I guess.
30:50
And so she slits his throat. She's limber.
30:53
Yes. She slits his throat.
30:54
He drops the the gun, and as he drops to the floor, she runs
30:57
upstairs. Missus Allman, who's up there
30:59
and now Missus Allman, who had obviously been wearing a black
31:02
wig, is now practically hairless.
31:04
She ends up stabbing her and killing her.
31:07
Then she runs out. On her way out, she grabs the
31:09
gun, goes out side, she runs out of the cemetery.
31:12
That's where Mr. Ullman, who is, even though he'd just been
31:14
stabbed, he's just like, Hun, let's not do this, this isn't a
31:22
good idea. Like he's so calm and it's like,
31:25
what? Then she's like, fuck you.
31:27
Instead of shooting him, which you think she would do, she
31:29
decides to shoot herself, which she's not good at that I guess
31:33
either because. She not only does she fail that
31:37
life, she failed. That death too, Yeah, no
31:40
kidding. Of course, there's the whole
31:42
Rosemary's Baby ending, kind of where she's got Sing Spawn and
31:46
her belly, so. You know, I, I did like the
31:49
movie. It, it did get a little slow and
31:52
I'm not sure if this was Ty West's first movie or not, but
31:55
it was definitely one of his earlier works and, and you could
31:58
tell. But still, you know, I, I'm not
32:01
a director myself, so I'm not going to be like, Oh my God,
32:03
this guy sucks. Unless the movie really sucked,
32:06
right? Yeah.
32:08
But you know, All in all, I would give it six cents.
32:12
You know, it wasn't fantastic, but it wasn't bad either.
32:15
Right. Yeah, I outside of the 1st 25
32:18
minutes, which I obviously didn't enjoy, the rest of you I
32:21
thought was good. Again, I loved the
32:23
cinematography, I loved how it looked.
32:25
I loved all the nostalgic references and the feeling that
32:28
came from all those nostalgic references.
32:29
And again, it felt so authentically old to me that I
32:33
was shocked that these people are still the same age basically
32:37
as they were when they made the movie.
32:39
Pretty much like, you know, whatever.
32:40
I did like how he did build up the tension because once it did
32:45
actually get to the part where it was technically a slow burn
32:47
and the intensity that came from her running around and again,
32:52
almost feeling like she's freaking herself out.
32:54
Not that there's anything scary, but even though we know that
32:57
obviously something is scary there or something bad's going
33:00
to happen, it almost could be something where she's just
33:02
freaking herself out. I also liked because if you
33:06
didn't have the idea as to where this story was going when the
33:09
son who shot her friend, when that scene happened, you could
33:14
almost at that point think there's some creepy fucker out
33:17
here who's going to torment her and drive her crazy and do some
33:20
shit to her in the house. That may not have anything to do
33:23
with devil rituals or anything like that.
33:25
But of course, when the movie opens, there's that whole
33:28
placard in the beginning that talks about Satanic panic and
33:31
the occult in the 80s. So it kind of makes it so you
33:34
you already know that that's going to happen.
33:36
So you realize that this isn't what this guy's there for.
33:39
He's just at that point you're like, what is he?
33:41
Is he just some just random guy that just killed her friend or
33:44
is he part of the ritual? But they could have made it to
33:47
where it could have seemed like he was some kind of crazy bad
33:49
guy. You could have kind of gotten
33:51
that feeling from it, which he still was technically, but not
33:54
in the way that I he could have been.
33:56
He could have been in a different way.
33:57
He could have, it could have made the movie seem like it was
33:59
going in a different direction, but really it was actually this.
34:02
He was part of a satanic cult, but because he's also the pizza
34:04
delivery guy and he was walking around outside all weird too
34:07
after he delivered the pizza. So you also could have gotten
34:10
that feeling from that as well after the first part.
34:12
I like the movie. I like the feel of the movie.
34:14
I like the pacing of the movie. Once we got to the house, the
34:17
actual ritual part was super fast.
34:20
I feel like that may have maybe what they did in the beginning,
34:24
they could have decreased and added a little bit more in that
34:28
part where the ritual was taking place.
34:30
Yeah, I agree. That seemed to happen so fast.
34:33
Like they were like, oh, we got to get this, OK, rush, rush,
34:35
rush, rush. So that could have been a little
34:38
different in in regard to time and stuff.
34:41
But yeah, like you, I would give it six cents.
34:43
It wasn't horrible. It was, again, there were so
34:46
many parts about it that I did like that weren't necessarily
34:48
plot parts of the movie, but I think with what he was trying to
34:52
go for with that feeling of those kinds of movies, he did a
34:56
really good job in doing that. So yeah, I'd go with Sixth Sense
34:59
as well. So you have anything else you'd
35:01
like to add? Or we can put a sock on it.
35:03
All right, Sock applied. And that wraps up The House of
35:06
the Devil, a movie that proves the real horror isn't Satan,
35:09
it's student debt. Next month, we're carving up
35:11
something special with our new theme.
35:13
Thanks, Slaughter. Because nothing says family
35:15
holiday quite like blood, bad decisions and forced gratitude.
35:19
We're kicking it off with Home Sweet Home from 1981, the movie
35:22
that asks a question. What if your Thanksgiving guest
35:24
was an escaped lunatic on PCP? Spoiler, it doesn't end well for
35:28
the Turkey or anyone else. This can be found on YouTube.
35:32
Until then, be scared, be prepared, and don't get caught
35:36
in the dark.