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88It is a fine little old-school thriller.
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83There's wit but never a wink in this smartly shot production, which pays homage to the 1980s without fetishizing the era.
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83If nothing else, Ti West's retro "Satan rules!" thriller The House Of The Devil gets the look and tone of early-'80s horror schlock exactly right.
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80West is far more adept at and interested in sustaining an unrelentingly ominous mood than in executing the genre-required spook shocks.
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80A clever picture, and something of a novelty -- it's not going to change the face or direction of horror filmmaking in any drastic way. But it's fun to watch something that's so obviously made with love.
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The buildup is undeniably effective; for most of the movie, it provides the same kind of thrills as "Paranormal Activity," if somewhat less brilliantly.
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80Mr. West shows a real gift for the genre, particularly in his ability to generate dread with pinpricks rather than bludgeoning shocks, something even veterans twice his age have difficulty achieving. After years of vivisectionist splatter, here is a horror movie with real shivers.
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75The film may provide an introduction for some audience members to the Hitchcockian definition of suspense: It's the anticipation, not the happening, that's the fun.
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75This isn't just a good throwback satanic thriller - it looks as if it was made during the era of satanist paranoia.
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75An almost fetishistic re-creation of a horror-suspense movie from around 1978.
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70Writer and director Ti West accesses all the hot buttons for fans of the genre in a manner that doesn't make fun of it (and its followers) in a "Scary Movie" way, but instead treats it with the appropriate amount of respect. (Key word: appropriate.)
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Pumping the audience with inhale-exhale zooms and out-of-the-way close-ups, director Ti West's ratcheting of suspense in this alone-in-an-empty-house tale is proficient, if not psychologically piercing, in the best "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" fashion.
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70Call it the best '80s babysitter-in-peril movie never made. The House of the Devil delivers about as much as one could reasonably hope from the not-quite-alone-in-the-house category, with the bonus of authentically re-creating the low-budget look and feel of that era's classic horror entries.
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70In keeping with his models, West is concerned with not suspense exactly but the ritual withholding and ultimate lavishing of bloody chaos.
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67By far the freakiest and most unnerving shocker in theatres this season.
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63Although the payoff is creepy, it takes a little too long to arrive -- and when it does, it's about as worn-out as the movie's title.
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63The result can be palpably unnerving.
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40This is the perfect illustration of the banality of most scare movies.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 7 out of 12
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Mixed: 3 out of 12
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Negative: 2 out of 12
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TarekM.10Finally a correct homage to the 80's horror flicks without any stupid quotes or irony. Rock on Ti West!