Runtime:
82 minutes
Release
Date: February 17, 2015
Rating:
NR
Director:
Andrew Jones
Despite
being only 82 minutes long, The Last House on Cemetery Lane felt
much, much, much longer to me.
John
Davies is a successful screenwriter living in London who grows tired
of the hustle and bustle of the city. Remembering the fun times he
had in the English countryside as a child, he decides to take a break
and move back. He finds the perfect home for rent through a local
real estate agent. It overlooks the water, has a large property
surrounding it, and comes with two full floors. During their meeting
though, he learns that there is actually a tenant on the second
floor. As she's blind and never leaves, he doesn't need to worry
about her. Though he isn't fond of sharing “his home” with
someone else, he agrees to rent it.
On one
of his first days, he looks outside and sees a beautiful woman
playing on the swingset nearby. After chatting with her, he learns
that her name is Cassie and that she lives in the neighborhood.
Cassie seems a little nervous about being around the house and
reluctantly admits that she heard stories about it before. Though
interested in the tales, he's even more interested in her.
The
longer that John stays in the house, the more unsettled he feels. It
starts out slowly. He thinks he feels someone watching him, he finds
things missing, he realizes that things moved to new locations, and
he hears noises inside the wall. Like most of us, he blames some of
it on the upstairs neighbor. She refuses to answer the door or even
talk to him, but the real estate agent assures him that Agnes is
harmless. Once John starts researching the house and learning about
what happened there over the years, he realizes that there might be
an underlying reason for all his weird experiences.
Not to
be a downer, but this movie really sucked. It was one of those that
made me keep grabbing the remote and checking to see how much time
was left and feeling disappointed that I had so much time left to go.
It's hard to explain, but it felt more like a movie that told us a
story instead of one that showed us a story. It was like: here's
John, John writes movies, here's this girl, John likes this girl,
here's something strange happening, etc. It felt super disjointed and
occasionally seemed like the actors didn't even want to be there,
which definitely pulled me out of the story.
As a low
budget movie, the special effects were particularly bad. The director
should have just skipped the idea of adding special effects and tried
to give the film an unsettling feel with things like creaky footsteps
in the hallway or dark shadows over his shoulder. It lacked anything
really new or even different.
As
someone with friends in the industry, I know that you can do a lot
with a very limited budget. It seems like the director of this one
didn't learn that. I kept waiting for something interesting or
entertaining to happen, but it felt more like a play that grudgingly
walked us through the story...
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