It's been years since I've bothered to grace IMdB with a review (the axing of the beloved forums gives little reason to visit this site) but I must make an exception for The Open House, which is by leaps and bound the worst Netflix Original film I've seen, and I even stomached the Adam Sandler titles.
This screenplay is so inept, I would think it was aiming for comedy if it weren't taking itself as serious as a heart attack. The buffoonery starts in the opening scene where the teenage son is running down the street. He asks his father for the time, and it's 5:07. They talk about how this is going to open the doors to scholarships. Note: serious runners want time down to the hundredth of a second.
Well, dad is soon offed in a parking lot accident. So what's mom and son to do without him? The answer of course, move into aunt's vacation home in the mountains she just so happens to have on the market. You know, because exploring the "horror" behind an open house inviting strangers into YOUR home should probably have something to do with the protagonists' house being for sell and not one they're merely staying at. Instead, it's like they're on vacation and this is only one of the numerous terrible plot points.
Hope you like characters who don't talk like humans. You're going to get a lot of that in The Open House. There's the creepy neighbor who reminds the widowed mother that her husband died on meeting her. There's also an overly friendly guy working retail whose sole purpose is to be everywhere.
I hope the inept team that worked on this reads this review, if for no other reason so they can learn the following about horror: 1) Having the hot water in the shower repeatedly turn off is not scary. 2) Making multiple trips to a "scary" basement unharmed diminishes the threat. 3) Returning "home" after an open house to find a phone on the table is not scary. 4) Filling your movie with red herrings doesn't automatically make sense of the ending. 5) The one time a horror movie sets up the protagonist as a track star and he gets not payoff.
IMdB, you removed the message boards, but can you please add a feature where users can select cast and crew to a personal list which flags all their past and future work?
This screenplay is so inept, I would think it was aiming for comedy if it weren't taking itself as serious as a heart attack. The buffoonery starts in the opening scene where the teenage son is running down the street. He asks his father for the time, and it's 5:07. They talk about how this is going to open the doors to scholarships. Note: serious runners want time down to the hundredth of a second.
Well, dad is soon offed in a parking lot accident. So what's mom and son to do without him? The answer of course, move into aunt's vacation home in the mountains she just so happens to have on the market. You know, because exploring the "horror" behind an open house inviting strangers into YOUR home should probably have something to do with the protagonists' house being for sell and not one they're merely staying at. Instead, it's like they're on vacation and this is only one of the numerous terrible plot points.
Hope you like characters who don't talk like humans. You're going to get a lot of that in The Open House. There's the creepy neighbor who reminds the widowed mother that her husband died on meeting her. There's also an overly friendly guy working retail whose sole purpose is to be everywhere.
I hope the inept team that worked on this reads this review, if for no other reason so they can learn the following about horror: 1) Having the hot water in the shower repeatedly turn off is not scary. 2) Making multiple trips to a "scary" basement unharmed diminishes the threat. 3) Returning "home" after an open house to find a phone on the table is not scary. 4) Filling your movie with red herrings doesn't automatically make sense of the ending. 5) The one time a horror movie sets up the protagonist as a track star and he gets not payoff.
IMdB, you removed the message boards, but can you please add a feature where users can select cast and crew to a personal list which flags all their past and future work?