Before watching the film, I only had a vague idea of what House At The End Of The Street from the previews. I thought it was a horror/slasher movie with Jennifer Lawrence about, well a house at the end of the street. I thought I was right but as it turns out, I was only partially right. I will, however, come back to that in a bit.
This is director Mark Tonderai’s second feature film and Jonathan Mostow bases it on a short story. Mostow has written a few dramatic stories like Breakdown so he’s no stranger to a twist of the ending. The movie stars Jennifer Lawrence (the Hunger Games), Max Thieriot (Jumper), Elisabeth Shue (Hollow Man) and Gil Bellows (The Shawshank Redemption).
On a very stormy night, you see a girl in a nightgown in a trance-like state walking down a hallway, knocking over a lamp. In another room, the sound of their daughter disturbs her parents and her mother goes to see what’s wrong. As she bends over to pick up the lamp, the girl bludgeons her mother with a hammer several times. The father hears commotion in the hall and in bursts the girl, hammer and all, only to land on the bed while all we see are bloody feathers falling to the floor.
Fast-forward 4 years later, Sarah (Shue) and her daughter Elissa (Lawrence) move into a house that is amazing at an incredible price. There’s just one catch, the yard backs up to the house where the murders happened. Sarah knew about the house and what happened there but assumed it was empty. After meeting the rest of the neighbors, Sarah and Elissa find out that the house isn’t empty but that the son is living in the house. What started out to be a pretty a wholesome BBQ turns into a gossiping match against Ryan, the person living in the strange house. They go on to tell them that he’s a bad kid and the house is driving their property values down. But Elissa wants to get to know more about Ryan and what really happened.
The setup really makes for a good story. Elizabeth Shue is a great surprise and not just an actress that might have peaked out years ago. She plays the part of the overly protective mother and should think about playing these roles more often. Jennifer Lawrence is probably the best thing to happen to this film. She has done plenty of dramatic roles and playing a strong female so this isn’t a stretch for her. She’s a very convincing actress and her terror feels genuine.
Unfortunately, there’s an issue I had with the ending. It almost seems like it was an oversight and the filmmakers forgot to wrap up the film. The movie has what I assumed was the ending and suddenly there is a scene dropped in. It’s an important scene to not place it better without the audience time to take it in.
Both the theatrical and the Unrated version of the movie have been transferred in to 1080p. With so many advances in the Blu-ray format in picture quality, it’s a shame that the picture was not consistent. I watched the unrated cut and the coloring as well as contrasting is all over the place. The video is very unnatural and the contrasting changes tend to happen in the middle of a shot. It’s unclear during what stage of the production created the issues but there is a possibility that they were the scenes cut back into the movie for the Unrated version on the Blu-ray.
The audio has been mixed in DTS-HD MA 5.1 and this is really the only part of the release that does very well. During the moments of suspense to make you jump, the sound is very clear and clean with a burst of sound that moves from channel to channel. Luckily, it’s not over driven and like I said the moments are very rare. It’s just too bad the picture takes so much away from the experience to have the sound and picture as opposites.
The supplements are extremely light. There is only one featurette that interviews most of the people involved in the film.
Edition Ratings
PG-13 for the Theatrical and Unrated for the Extended Cut
Disc Details
BD-50 Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital Copy
Video Resolution
1080p AVC MPEG-4
Audio
English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Subtitles
English SDH
Spanish
Supplements
Journey Into Terror: Inside ‘House at the End of the Street’- this featurette gives an inside look at the making of and conception of the movie.
Theatrical Trailer
Sneak Peeks- this is an option to see the previews on the disc individually.
As it turns out, the film ended up being more of a thriller than a horror film with you trying to put the story together. The movie is definitely entertaining but the video problems are a pretty big distraction. Also, the ending is a miss. To me, these issues take so much away from the movie and the release but I would say give it a rent to decide for yourself.
