Critique of Open House

 

I watched the Open House a Netflix original horror movie. The movie stars Dylan Minette, Piercy Dalton, and Sharif Atkins. I wouldn’t be surprised if none of those names you can recognize. Following in suit with other Netflix originals the Open House is an atrocious movie, it isn’t scary, interesting, nor is the acting anything above mediocre. I will spoiling certain events as the movie is horrible and you shouldn’t watch it. The movie follows Logan, who after his father’s death moves into their cousin’s large mountain home with his mother.

First of all, it fails completely as a horror movie, there isn’t a single moment that scared me or put me on edge and the only thing I can applaud is that it doesn’t rely on jumpscares. At the very beginning of the movie the screen is all black and you can hear heavy breathing, implying something is happening, but as it turns out it’s just Logan going for a run. This is a common trope in horror movies and a terrible one at that. The antagonist of the movie is a mysterious serial killer listed as the “Man in Black”, and by mysterious I mean it because nothing is revealed about him, and he has no relationship with the characters or is there any greater meaning to his character.

The movie constantly leads you to believe there is some greater power at work, but nothing ever happens. In the basement of the house, there is a collapsed tunnel that leads out, this would lead you to believe that maybe this is related to the killer, nope. Logan and his mother also run into a crazy woman who speaks of her husband, it’s heavily implied that her husband is related to or is the killer, however this isn’t the case either. At one point the killer plays a song that played when Logan’s father was killed, despite this, the killer has no relation to his father’s death. Despite his size, the killer is able to creep around the house completely unnoticed.

The characters are all killed in the end as expected and in ridiculous ways. Logan’s mother is kidnapped and taken to the basement by the killer, where she is killed when Logan accidentally stabs her after the killer throws her at him. The killer chases Logan down and removes his contacts, leaving him to wander around the woods until the morning, when the killer finishes him off. The movie then ends with the killer driving to another open house. This movie as previously stated was awful and I would not recommend it to anyone. I would give it 3/10, and it can at least be funny at times due to how stupid it is.