Seeking a fresh start, teenager Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) and her mother (Elizabeth Shue) move to a new home that unfortunately happens to be next door to the house where crazed teenager Carrie-Anne murdered her parents. Locals claim the girl vanished mysteriously after the incident while some even believe she still hides in the woods. But when Elissa befriends the sole survivor of the murders, Carrie-Anne's brother Ryan (Max Thierot), she discovers that within those walls still lurks a dark and terrible secret.
Made shortly after Jennifer Lawrence's Oscar-nominated turn in Winter's Bone (2010) but released in the wake of her breakout role in The Hunger Games (2012), House at the End of the Street comes across in part like an attempt to mould the gifted actress into a more conventional teen star. The sort of thing Jennifer Love Hewitt might have made back in the Nineties. The film spent a long time in development, having been originally announced ten years prior with Jonathan Mostow attached to direct from a script penned by then-hot Donnie Darko (2001) auteur Richard Kelly. Mostow, who made decent road thriller Breakdown (1997) and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), retains a "story by" credit but the movie wound up as the second feature film from former BBC Radio One DJ Mark Tonderai following his British made indie thriller Hush (2008). Despite largely negative reviews from critics, House at the End of the Street proved successful at the box-office so it is likely Tonderai will get a third feature off the ground.
On the evidence here, he is undeniably a visually gifted filmmaker yet, alas, a clumsy storyteller. Working with seasoned cinematographer Miroslaw Baszak - who shot Land of the Dead (2004) for George A. Romero and cult favourite Pontypool (2008) - Tonderai uses the Techniscope format to provide a grainy image which combined with burnished amber and sickly green tones gives the feel of a horror movie from the Seventies or early Eighties. He also combines a few audio-visual motifs familiar from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1973) with some showy music video imagery of the sort critics loathe but would likely enliven the pedestrian plot for the target teen audience. Regrettably, none of this compensates for his awkward fumbling of vital plot information. The film trips over itself to get to its big would-be shock twist, which seasoned horror fans will see coming a mile off, more concerned with mood than clarity.
Although drenched in a horror movie ambience the story, as penned by David Louka the writer behind likeable comedy-thriller The Dream Team (1988), the underwhelming basketball-themed Whoopi Goldberg vehicle Eddie (1996) and more recently Jim Sheridan's mystery thriller Dream House (2011) pairing husband and wife Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, bears all the trappings of young adult fiction. Elissa copes with family issues, struggles to realize her dream of a music career and falls for a boy with a dark secret in his past. All familiar teen lit. stuff likely too lightweight for the horror crowd but also lacking the emotional weight necessary to hook those young legions of Jennifer Lawrence fans who flocked to Hunger Games. Lawrence is wonderful as the outspoken, resourceful heroine but then when isn't she? Plus it is always nice to see Elizabeth Shue back on the screen in a canny bit of casting given she could have easily played Elissa thirty years ago. The mother-daughter relationship proves the most complex and compelling in the movie as the former tries to prevent the latter making the same mistakes she made.
Things lumber on with only mild suspense and little excitement till the lively and fairly involving climax, but a lot of soap opera angst. Signposted in big bold letters on the film's poster, the twist in the tale regrettably reinforces one character's conviction that you just cannot save people from themselves. Which is an unfortunate conservative message. Also a plot this hackneyed has not earned the right to lift the closing image from Psycho (1960).
