Spoiler alert "House of the Devil" is still my favorite TI West movie. His first horror movie in 9 years works off the formula from the splatter films of the late 70s. The acting an character development is on par with your average Friday the 13th sequel, so unlikeable enough to hope they get killed. In this regard the movie gets it better than the last Texas Chainsaw Massacre that Netflix released. The premise is a director leads a group of twenty somethings into bumfuck Texas to make Porn. From there all sorts of messages creep in regarding sex, but the real monster her is old age. The threat of youth and the repulsion the elderly carry.
The ambiguous nature of this movie until the shit hits the fan leaves much to the imagination until everything unfolds. At first you think maybe the old lady is a witch. What she is in truth is the best actor of this movie. Kid Kudi's survival rate is about what you would expect from a black person in a horror movie, though he does not die first. For a van of people who came to have sex in the woods they destined to die by breaking the rules of horror movies. It is however the person who is most against sex when pressed to be open minded that dies first which is a spin on the normal morals. The gore effects are purposefully bad to looks like something from the 70s.
Despite the gruesome deaths that unfold, including death by alligator, the most gruesome moment is the girl who has to climb out from under a bed old people are having sex in. This pushes the ageism theme home. The actors are made up to look more hideous that the normal panges of old age would bring upon them. Hopefully not the best horror movie we are going to see all year, it is not bad, and uses more restraint than not most of the time. Chelsea Wolfe does the music but aside the song at the end you can not really tell. If you have a thing for 70s splatter this is done better than most attempts to reboot it.
