IFC Midnight once again delivers with it’s dedication to the horror genre, and their latest release, Anthony Scott-Burns’ ‘Our House‘, is another example of that dedication.
The movie tells the story of a science student, Ethan (Thomas Mann) who is using his genius to attempt to build a machine, along with his classmates and girlfriend Hannah (Nicola Peltz), that allows objects to be charged with electricity wirelessly.
Ethan puts spending quality time with his mother, father, younger brother and sister, on the backburner in lieu of his experiment’s development and even cuts a trip home from college short, so he can go test his machine at the university.
While leaving his home visit early, Ethan also skips out on his promised responsibility of taking his younger sister, Becca (Kate Moyer), to swimming lessons, leaving it to his parents instead.
Tragically, Ethan’s parents die in a car crash forcing Ethan to take over caring for his siblings, while working on his project, which he now brought home to work on.
As the family struggles to cope with the loss of their parents, the machine somehow conjures paranormal activity, that is interpreted to be their parents, at first.
As the movie progresses it becomes more obvious that the spirits communicating with Ethan, Becca, and their brother Matt (Percy Hynes White), is not their parents, and is something potentially sinister.
The movie spends a good deal of the movie building the story, which allows the viewer to develop sympathy and empathy with the main characters.
Thomas Mann does a solid job in his role as Etha, as does Moyer for her portrayal of Becca, but Nicola Peltz seemed like a zombie in playing her part, void of emotion, and putting off a mundane performance that takes away from one of the main characters of the story, and someone who is supposed to be a supportive significant other of one of the main characters.
The movie is solid, and does a good job at telling an engaging story, but the lack of scares really hold this film back from being more than ordinary.
Things kick up to another notch towards the end, but it feels that this film left a lot on the table in terms of scares, as they did a phenomenal job setting the plot up for something “big”.
