"You could do worse than checking into this House."

House is not a remake of the 1986 Steve Miner film House starring William Katt, nor is it a big screen version of the hit TV show House on the Fox network. I tell you this because if you're expecting either of these (especially the latter), you'll be in for surprise. Based on the novel of the same name by Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti (a novel I haven't read but feel that I should now that I've seen the movie) this House revolves around two couples in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's also got backwood devil worshipers and a masked maniac known as the Tin Man ... who plays an extremely sick and twisted game.

Still with me? Good. Like many horror films before it, House begins with a bickering and unhappy couple (Vacancy anyone?) whose car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Instead of waiting for a tow, they decide to look for help in the wilderness and come across a creepy old bed and breakfast. This is the point where you want to scream "don't go in there," as it's obviously a bad idea ... but they do it anyway. The set-up aside, what I liked about House was that it felt original, which is something to be said nowadays in the era of countless remakes and sequels. It features a creepy new villain in the Tin Man, along with a bizarre devil worshiping family led by the always over-the-top Bill Moseley, and a different approach to the haunted house genre -- the house wasn't haunted by ghosts so much as it was haunted by the demons of the couples' past.

However, after stumbling out of the theater fat and happy with the haunted horror show I had just witnessed, I began to see that House (as original as it felt) was made up of bits and pieces of a number of movies I've seen before. Notably, the Tin Man's game of death with the two unlucky couples -- and their willingness to play it -- came off a lot like the folks playing Jigsaw's game in Saw 2. When the characters confronted their inner demons through the hauntings of their past, it played a lot like the haunting of John Cusak's past in 1408. Throw in a tone along the lines of The Amityville Horror and you have House in a nutshell. Putting those similarities aside, House still delivered a haunted vision that felt new and refreshing.

Adding to the haunted vision of House is director Robby Henson's dark, undeniably creepy palate and slick looking imagery. The film rolled along quickly, as most book-to-film adaptations do. I felt like we should have spent more time with some of the characters, but instead we were pushed through situation after situation, resulting in little to no downtime. Somehow, I think the book was paced a little differently. Most shots were stylish, but were brought down by the overuse of partly unfocused frames. While this can be kind of cool, it became a huge distraction -- I kept thinking that I was either having vision problems or that the theater's projector was on the fritz.

Leslie Easterbrook stole the show as the creepy mother, giving an unsettling performance from the get-go. Michael Madsen, always fun to see, delivered his usual cool yet badass persona and even rocked some killer aviator shades. The rest of the cast was adequate, delivering the required performances without any real surprises.

When all is said and done, House delivered the thrills and chills that you would expect from an ambitious "haunted" house movie like this. This is not to say that it didn't have its share of problems. It suffered from some logic issues, the Tin Man wasn't developed nearly enough, the final battle of good versus evil was confusing (and lacked a satisfying explanation), and the twist ending -- as surprising and unexpected as it was -- was clichéd and ultimately uninspired. However, all that is easy to overlook -- it was a creepy and original tale of confronting your sins and, in a weird way, finding forgiveness. If you're looking for a somewhat mindless romp into a well done haunted house, then you can do worse than checking into this House.

Grade: B-

Ammon Gilbert handles the latest in horror weekly for Film.com

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