#the only thing the open house was good for was dylan minnette in glasses

[denouxments]

dylan minnette. cismale. he/him. — did you see { alex mercier }, i haven’t seen the { twenty-one } year old in a while! you know, they’re a { musician }, and have been living in jersey city for { twenty-one years }. some say they're { cynical & indecisive }, but i think they're { generous & talented }. regardless, i’m glad { alex } is here.

backstory

aaaaaand in the door to the right we have trash son #2, alex !! ( woo ! ahh ! ) you can find his dossier page HERE, his biography does not exist yet ( i’m gonna kick my own ass ), and there is a pinterest board for him HERE.

ok so boy is a middle child through and through LOL. his dad is a writer who also works as an english professor at new york university, meanwhile his mom works in human services helping people who have fallen off their track in life and stuff.

alex is essentially a male carbon copy of his mom in appearance but his personality is 100% his dad’s lmao

his siblings are a wanted connection !

also his household includes a deaf cat named shrimp that alex literally fished out of a gutter when he was 14. she’s his baby despite the fact that he’s mildly allergic to both cats AND shrimp ( i r o n i c ). here’s the instagram of the cat i’m saying she looks like

real mundane middle class life. there have been highs and lows like any other family, but there’s no tragedy here folks ! that comes later and has nothing to do with his family !

his dad was really into rock music and playing the drums when he was younger cuz wow the 80s and really wanted at least one of his kids to have good taste in music, so he kept the drum set and all the old records despite the fact that they were just collecting dust in the garage . . . until alex came along !

first was the drums, then it was the guitar, then it was being dual-enrolled in both the band and choir classes, and then, finally, it was starting his own band with 2 friends at only 11 years old

his dad got real lucky cuz alex clearly loved music, and he considers the 80s to be legendary. 

i'm gonna revisit his music in a moment cuz we gotta start getting into the tragedy that i mentioned ! so alex was like a really chill dude when high school started. he was a bit of a pretentious hipster bitch, but he was chill. he didn’t really say no to things ? like if something or someone just fell into his lap, he’d roll with it and didn’t really think too much about the consequences ? he was a big stoner and lost his virginity and probably way too young of an age because of it. he just didn’t really Care too much lol

he was essentially that quiet stoner that played his guitar in the courtyard and didn’t pay much attention to anything going on around him 

. . . unless he overheard you talking about something that was stupid or he didn’t agree with. then he’d butt in to be like “l o l that’s wrong !”

then he met molly ! if you’ve read chloe’s intro for bobbi you know molly ! we love molly ! molly was cute in that girl-next-door way and she was funny with good taste. it was hard for alex not to fall in love with her, really. they were friends first before they started dating, and it was through her that he met all of his current ride-or-die friends. he had never been good at making them, so she was a blessing for his social life. she was amazing. he loved her, his parents loved her, they were good. she was good and then she was gone. just like that. a car accident in which she wasn’t even the driver.

to say the loss devastated him would be an understatement. he shut down completely. he stopped hanging out with friends, stopped playing guitar in the courtyard; his presence in class was like that of a ghost. nobody ever knew what to say to alex before, and it was twice as true now. he just sort of Existed for the remainder of junior year, throwing himself into his studies instead of ever really taking the Time to Deal with it all.

it really hit him like a truck when summer hit and it was at this point that his parents forced him to start seeing a therapist.

his therapist recommended he use his band and music as an outlet, since that seemed to be his healthiest coping mechanism. ( see, i told you we’d get back to that ! ) taking this advice, he threw himself headfirst into it. like, he got really into his band. it’d been a bit of a hobby between friends before, and sometimes they worked small gigs, but now alex was also trying to produce them on a bigger scale. this helped him through his grief tremendously, especially because if felt like he was doing molly proud.

alex was 18 and had graduated when all this hard work paid off. after releasing a self-made ep entitled after molly, the band started gaining some serious traction. we’re talking getting featured on spotify’s indie hits lists and their fanbase skyrocketing in size from the couple hundred monthly listeners it had been. suddenly they were getting booked sold out indie gigs left and right all across the manhatten area. it was nuts and it is still nuts. they even have a well demanded

they’ve put out a 2nd ep since the initial takeoff and are now working on a full blown album ! exciting !

so, yeah, that’s definitely an exciting exchange for being utterly heartbroken i suppose. its been years since molly passed now, so he’s okay now for the most part. he still gets sad sometimes, and he still has all the pictures they took together and all the cheesy playlists they made for each other saved. she’s always gonna be the first girl he was ever in love with,, and i don’t think he’s yet to have a serious relationship since her, but don’t worry about him just being a clay jensen 2.0. my boy is faaaar from that and he’s had his grace period, y’know ? he good.

personality

fuuuucking hiiiiipster buuuuullshiiiit ! coffee and vinyl aesthetic all day bby. will call out your shit taste in music

loves to debate and argue semantics. will always play devils advocate even if he agrees with you 100%. also will go on for hours about the political climate and existence if you accidentally get him there

a bit antisocial. he doesn’t really know how to, like, approach people ? and then when people approach him he has a tendency to rub people the wrong way with his lackluster people skills

tries to go to parties and bars and stuff sometimes because that’s Normal, right ?

a ride or die pal when you do manage to befriend him though ! would drop e v e r y t h i n g for his friends and loves to spoil them relentlessly. the type to randomly show up at your house in his 3,000 year old mustang and take you to lunch or just go driving. 

big ole hufflepuff

he’s not really that super free spirit that he was before molly passed. now he actually cares a more about his actions to the point of being lowkey paranoid, honestly. like he’s always wanted tattoos but he constantly second guesses what he wants to get cuz he doesn’t wanna be the guy that got a shitty tattoo, y’know ? so he hasn’t done it at all

cynical boyyyyy. he’s one of those guys that’s like “i’m a realist, not a pessimist”. definitely doesn’t have a whole lot of faith in others outside of his friends and family. will always assume the worst out of people and question their motives

thinks of himself as really boring. not in a self deprecating way, but a factual way

hobbies include music, video games ( he does streams of him being shit at pubg on twitch sometimes ! ), watching movies ( horror specifically is a favorite ), sitting on his roof at 3am to look at the sky, going on walks when there’s nothing else to do, and aggressively frowning when his car breaks down in the middle of nowhere

seriously he really enjoys horror. halloween is his favorite holiday even though he isn’t really big on candy or dressing up. he just thinks the spooky aesthetic is real fun and its cool to see what everyone else is doing

he’s a skeptic on all things supernatural so all you boogaras better snatch him up !!

i drew this expression doodle page that honestmeme sums up his personality pretty well ( it is messy so plz be kind . . . )

connections

his bandmates is a given. i just need 2 others , , , any gender any fc. i have a wc for it.

either of his 2 siblings . . . another wc

any music friends tbh

rival musicians ? yes

people he just doesn’t get along with in general. he’s a pretentious snot so its pretty easy

unlikely friends ( probably someone super idealistic and bubbly )

childhood friends

he hasn’t had a serious relationship since molly so maybe someone he’s kinda into and that’s kinda into him but they taking it REAL slow

on the off hand some exes from him trying to see if he was ready to date again and just wasn’t

someone he debates with a lot. friends or not, they’re just really fun to banter back and forth with

horror night movie buddies !!

gets blazed w/ him on the roof in the middle of the night rambling about if ants have a conscious

he’s got his own place but a roommate or 2 would be nice !

anything anything anything. he’s constantly finding himself in bizarre situations that he just rolls with so long as it doesn’t leave a bad butterfly effect. hmuuuuuu and we can brainstorm

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

[Review] THE OPEN HOUSE Is Just A Vacant Spot In The Neighborhood

Have you ever, like, noticed how weird open houses are? Apparently, I didn’t think they were, until The Open House hit Netflix on January 19th and I was able to see for myself what the horrid consequences of hosting one would be.

The Open House centers on Netflix original 13 Reasons Why and Don’t Breathe star Dylan Minnette and his mother, played by Piercey Dalton (The Orchard). The two find themselves in a hopeless situation following a family tragedy that leads them to move into a relative’s empty vacation house where they are “besieged by threatening forces”.

Being acquired by one of the top streaming services out there (that turns out horror gems like a mining valley), starring a currently very popular teen star, and entailing a simple ‘haunted house’ premise means The Open House would surely be good, right?

Wrong. Oh, so wrong.

Before I rip through this, because there is A LOT of ripping to do, my overall point here is that The Open House ultimately fails because it tries to be everything its not. What viewers need to know first and foremost about The Open House is that we, the horror community, have seen this before. Every part of this movie from the ‘stylish’ camera angles to the final ‘twist’ is taken from another, better film and artist.

It’s obvious in the film industry, that writers and directors draw influence from somewhere. That somewhere is almost always previously existing films ranging from actual plot to directing techniques. At this point almost all horror tropes have been covered or touched in some way, but it takes a special filmmaker to take a practical plot line, like a haunted house, and turn it on its head. Writer and director, Matt Angel (Ha/lf), is not that filmmaker. What he has done with his first opportunity to write and direct an official feature length horror film wind’s up mocking the talent and creative storytelling techniques used by those that have come before him.

The only positive and redeeming qualities The Open House has, that I would like to get out of the way, is the decent acting and the pretty intense score. Both, however, are quickly undermined by the forced ‘style’ Angel tries to cop from films ranging from Get Out to Funny Games. I admit I don’t know much about cinematography, but I know enough to sense a director’s certain style and I know when enough is enough. Each important shot in this film is different from the another, borrowing from well-recognized angles like James Wan’s panoramic scene movements to M. Night Shyamalan’s trademark perspective angles. Angel overuses distinct techniques almost as if to cover the spread of what’s popular in horror right now. False style and a narrative lacking any meaning and depth is not exactly what viewers want.

Basically, it feels as though he watched the most popular horror and genre films of the last ten years, put together some shallow and pretentious formula, thought ‘Easy, I could do that!’, and made this passionless, pointless Frankenstein of a movie to get himself out onto the scene.

I imagine him working on this was a lot like that scene in Scream 3 where Scott Foley’s director character rants about wanting to make a love story, but he has to make a horror movie first because the studio is making him to do it. You know what I’m talking about, right?

Okay, now that I’ve got that out of my system, I feel it’s necessary to go through the narrative, step-by-step in order to really justify why I feel this way toward a harmless, but wasteful, Netflix addition. No one likes negative reviews and, hopefully, no one likes to write them. I can find the good in most films from wide releases to the most obscure C-rated horror movie, but if I’m deeply disappointed I like to detail exactly why.

SPOILERS (which are only necessary to review a movie that is this bad)

Minnette’s character, Logan, and his mother, Naomi, are quickly hit with grief following the sudden traumatic and accidental death of Logan’s father (it’s incredibly similar to the opening sequence of Disturbia). We learn through many passive-aggressive comments made by Naomi throughout the movie that this has left her and her son in financial stress which we later learn was because of her husband ‘not caring’ enough to leave her and Logan well-off in the event of his untimely death. No insurance? Don’t middle-aged women typically murder their husbands to cash-out on their life insurance policies? Anyways…

Her nameless sister offers up a vacant vacation home that she and Logan can live in because she can’t afford the bills alone which Naomi takes her up on. The catch? They have to be out of the house whenever an open house is scheduled, which sounds to me like a much bigger hassle than finding a job on my own. We never hear from the sister character again, not because she gets caught up in some sinister situation or anything, but because of true carelessness on Angel’s part.

Logan and Naomi make their way up to the mountain mansion, nearly hitting a phantom figure out on the road in the dark (here I would cite all of the movies this scene is a ripoff of, but we don’t have that time). I won’t even do a review the disservice of ranting about jump scares. I feel, typically, it’s a staple tactic for a scary movie (how else can a general audience truly get scared without them?), so I am not drawing attention to the fact that it was a cheap thrill because The Open House has plenty of those, but that it was both important to the twist at the end and so unimportant at the same time.

  Deciding to stop at a gas station in town, we are introduced to two of the most useless character written for effect and for the sake of being red herrings: the old, loony, invasive neighbor who knows entirely too much about everyone, Martha, played by Patricia Bethune (Longmire, True Blood) and the odd, all too forward and friendly store clerk Chris, played by Sharif Atkins (White Collar). The entire scene, and really any other scene including Martha or Chris, is heavy with the feeling that something is off about them.

Martha mentions the death of her own husband and recognizes Naomi and Logan from pictures her neighbor, Naomi’s sister, showed her in one scene. In later scenes where she is randomly walking their lawn in the dead of night she does not recognize Logan, and later after that she drops in unannounced with banana bread and confusingly mentions that her husband is alive to Naomi. In one of her final scenes, Martha appears on the road Logan is running on (oh yeah, he’s a runner) and creepily insists on driving him home after he gets sick.

One minute Chris is just a sweet, possible love interest for Naomi much to Logan’s dismay, and the next he is awkwardly showing up at the house and requesting to see the inside. Just for the reader’s information, this house has no significance whatsoever other than the fact that it is big. There is no back story, no ghostly history, no one murdered Old Man Anderson with an axe in the basement, or anything like that, so I was very puzzled as to why this man would want to look around and why Naomi would let him. How this happens I don’t know, but Naomi loses track of Chris going in and out of the rooms and just assumes he’s left.

I only summarize these scenes because they have absolutely nothing to do with the plot whatsoever. They mimic the oddities of the characters seen in Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Shyamalan’s The Visit, but serve no purpose other than to lead viewers into thinking there is something there that there really, truly isn’t. I don’t think Matt Angel fully understands the way a red herrings is meant to be used in a film.

Halfway through this mess Logan begins to notice strange things happening around the house. Supernatural-type strange things. His cell phone, glasses, and cereal bowl appear and reappear. Doors open slowly within the frame (very similar to Paranormal Activity and that iconic scene in The Strangers). Naomi is plagued, and I mean plagued, with every woman’s worst nightmare while taking a shower: cold water.

The pilot light is blown out more times than I could even stand to keep track of. Each time this happens, towel-clad Naomi, goes down to the pitch black basement to relight it (each time a gimmick of Lily Taylor’s match-lighting scene in The Conjuring). Logan is, of course, equally plagued with memories of his father’s death and with vivid hallucinations of him in the basement.

On top of all of this they are shooed out of their house by a bossy real estate agent and her eager assistant twice for open house showings. Twice. Each time providing us with less than pivotal scenes involving Logan and his mother included just to move things along. Always looking for the twist before it comes, I was getting the feeling that possibly Logan and his mother were not really there themselves, maybe they were dead the way The Others perfectly tricks you? Maybe that has something to do with them having to be out of the house? Unfortunately, not even that was the case. The narrative of this story has all the makings, turns, and questions that eventually transpire into a huge twist at the end, but it is far from sophisticated enough to execute one.

Eventually the disappearance and reappearance of things in the house takes a toll on the relationship between mother and son. There is a pretty harsh explosion over the crumpling of a family photo where Naomi and Logan lash out at one another kind of out of nowhere. There is no development to either of these characters nor growth or lack thereof in their relationship so it’s more of a scene to roll your eyes over.

While watching this I found myself thinking that something has to be going on. There is going to be some revelation in the end to tie all of this weirdness together, that’s usually what happens with a divisive genre film, and it will all make sense. What the audience gets is the ‘twist’ mirroring that of Housebound and The Boy. Logan and his mother are finally met with the malevolent force in the third act. I’ve cut out a lot of details, again for the sake of time, because they have absolutely nothing to do with the development or ending whatsoever.

The cause of all the seemingly supernatural happenings? A faceless, nameless stranger has been living among them in the house slowly stalking and playing with the mother and son before deciding to end both of their lives. The entire finale of this movie is an absolute disaster resulting in huge flaws from the stranger knocking Logan out cold and dosing him in water causing him to freeze to the ground unable to move (and run!) to Naomi stumbling into the sharp end of Logan’s frigid, shaking knife-holding hand. With icicles literally brandishing his eyebrows, Logan escapes into the forest, but the stranger eventually catches up and strangles the life out of him. The stranger departs and the audience, if they haven’t stabbed themselves with their own knives yet, watch as he trucks off into the unknown past another open house sign.

Angel’s message throughout this wreck of a story is just simple: you never know who will come in and stay if you have public open house showings. This stranger is apparently an open house killer and the story we were fed just so happened to center on this mother and son going through a grievous (yet unimportant to the plot) time in their lives? I’m sorry, but the whole “Because you were home” reasoning behind The Strangers does not work here. The story tries so hard to match the incredibly powerful and dreadful ending of Funny Games, but it falls extremely flat and frozen. You’ll need to watch The Open House to get the full effect of that last joke.

Angel tried to incorporate too many parts into his Franken-movie and, unfortunately, all of the parts did not fit well together. It wound up being a mixture destructive only to itself. The dead father motif combined with the odd, very weird neighbor characters, mixed with the supernatural-happenings-actually-being-a-person-in-the-walls ending made for a very sloppy, depth-less, empty story. I find myself encouraging others to watch it just so that we can discuss all of the horrible things wrong with it.

The disappointed audience is left with questions, but not in a good way. As much as it wants to, this film is not the equivalent to that of modern ground-breaking genre films that leave their audiences with conversation bits and thoughts after they end, but instead it left us with the question we all hate asking ourselves once the credits roll: What the hell did I just watch?

The real irony here is that The Open House is indeed like a real open house: it’s vacant, and empty on the inside, the details are staged to make it look like something it’s not, it’s represented by a company name you recognize and trust, you feel optimistic going in, but wind up running out screaming because there is a deal-breaker looming beneath the surface. It’s not usually a psychotic, murderous squatter, but it happens. Huge dealbreaker.

    The post [Review] THE OPEN HOUSE Is Just A Vacant Spot In The Neighborhood appeared first on Nightmare on Film Street.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2Fi6OSA via IFTTT