The House on Pine Street (2015)

Touches You

Powerful

People are voting emotionally.

Blistering performances.

It is hard to believe that this film is rated as highly as it is. The film has some basic jumps and scares - standard fare in any horror film, but the film seriously lacks any type of plot or story line. I actually wonder how this film received any financial backing given that the story is so weak. The plot can be summarised as follow: Pregnant woman and hubby move into house, creepy stuff happens, the end. There is no explanation given at any point as to what was going on in the house, or why the house was haunted. There is no plot twist or sense of building suspense or dramatic conclusion. Auxiliary characters just serve to eat up minutes of the film with pointless conversations and details that are not followed up. It is a frustrating experience. You wait for the director to take you on a scary journey, but ultimately all threads lead nowhere. The whole haunted house genre has been done to death, and you can find much more effective examples than this one. Rated 3 for some spooky parts only, but the rest is discardable stereotypical junk.

While I'm no movie expert, I am a horror fan and not easily scared. Sadly, there's so long between a horror movie which really delivers, but this one did rather well I thought. What makes it all the more joyful, is the lack of reliance on special effects. It's well paced and uses the art of suggestion rather than cheep jump-scares, a style I appreciate. Furthermore, I found myself sympathizing greatly with the female protagonist, another key element in a good horror movie. This movie keeps the viewer speculating and guessing until the end, which I find is the turning point of a scary movie. Nothing is more scary that the unknown, as we well know. This brings me to the only regret I have about this movie, -the ending. I won't reveal anything, but as most suspense movies, the ending leaves the viewer a bit disappointed. I for my part can forgive the movie for this, since it relates to the point above. It's the unknown which is most scary, the sum of possible explanations. As soon as the movie settles on one specific explanation, most of the suspense is diffused. Don't let this keep you from viewing the movie though. I promise, it postpones the inevitable solution as long as possible. All in all; no masterpiece, but delivers as a horror movie.

An unsettled couple with a baby on the way move back from the city to the wife's hometown, but she dreads their new home while everyone else thinks she's crazy.Dialogue heavy psychological ghost story with problems in script, direction, editing and pace. The stand out feature is the photography and framing of shots, where a lot of care and intelligence is on show from the start. The dialogue is often too much or just trite, and many scenes start too early or end too late, and some of the cut aways or inserts in the editing are pointless. There is a good house warming scene, lively and well observed, but that's about it. The biggest problem is that the ghost story doesn't measure up to the psychological drama, with no drive to it - comparable to The Babadook - and the director's overuse of jump scares is feeble. And 111 mins? 20 too many.The parts are well played, with the lead actress giving good close up and the mother and psychic showing their experience, but sometimes the actors struggled with the dialogue and the lack of motivation within the story.The music is good but nothing outstanding.Overall - frustrating to see so much quality serving a weak story.

This was recommended to me because I liked The Conjuring, but I think The House on Pine Street hearkens back to an even earlier more stylish film -- Robert Wise's The Haunting. Like that film, The House on Pine Street uses mostly sound effects and lighting for its scares, though mixed in with modern shooting techniques to make it feel fresh. The film creates honest scares while also portraying a young wife's ambivalence toward motherhood and returning to her hometown. Fun and more effective for what it doesn't actually show or tell us is going on, it waits awhile before getting into the paranormal. It's patient, intelligent, and well-acted.