Weirdling_Wolf Review of The Shunned House

The Shunned House (2003 Video)

'To stay in this darkly dreaming Witch House is to shun life itself'

[8/10 · 20 January 2021]

In stylish Director/D.O.P Ivan Zuccon's starkly atmospheric, visually striking H.P Lovecraft adaptation 'The Shunned House' (2003) he not only dynamically expresses himself as being an exciting new voice in horror, his grisly Gothic nightmare can also be resolutely placed among the glorious pantheon of Italian genre greats, a densely macabre work ominously references the genius of horror icon Lucio Fulci with its slowly creeping, darkly-shadowed menace, the heady, pervasive threat of its sepulchral settings, the morbidly insinuating suggestions of some ancient, inexorable evil and scintillating splashes of nauseatingly effective gore. To have so expertly woven these ancient yarns of diabolical dread: 'The Shunned House', 'The Music of Erich Zann' and 'The Dreams in the Witch House' into one seamless terror tapestry of modern eldritch horror is certainly no mean feat and to do it with such fluency is an extraordinarily creative achievement. A rather aloof, self-possessed writer Alex (Giuseppe Larusso) and his pulchritudinous squeeze Rita (Frederica Quagliari) uncomfortably sojourn in an especially desolated, mildewed house of doomy historical disrepute, ostensibly residing there in order for Alex to get some colourful background for his new book but he may have altogether sinister ulterior motives for so brusquely dragging his buxom beau to this benighted, aggressively inhospitable ruin! Zuccon wastes little time embedding the seed of squirmy unease in the viewer and it is not long before said angst-laden mote germinates into an especially virulent manifestation of reality warping, multi-dimensional madness in this witheringly eerie, profoundly grim-looking portmanteau of vividly-rendered Lovecraftian mania! With the exception of maestro's Stuart Gordon and Lucio Fulci few filmmakers are able to so successfully evoke the nihilistic, foul-smelling, soul-tainting terror so indelibly prevalent in the fitful psyche of H.P Lovecraft's more corrosively malevolent stories. Director Zucco's chiaroscuro photography is gloomily evocative, bringing to mind the dismally subterranean, nightmare-inducing vistas of maestro Fulci's 'City of The Living Dead', morbidly expressed in the diabolically dank and tomb-blackened art direction of Roberta Romagnoli. The sublimely sinister film's tasteful special effects / make-up designs by Massimo Storari are gruesomely chilling and the nervy, unsettling score by Acid Vacuum means that no molecule goes unmolested during their visit to Lovecraft's diabolical, demon-laden domicile 'The Shunned House'.