{"id":28599,"date":"2018-07-27T13:23:24","date_gmt":"2018-07-27T17:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=28599"},"modified":"2018-07-27T13:44:39","modified_gmt":"2018-07-27T17:44:39","slug":"our-house-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/27\/our-house-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Our House (2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019m always a sucker for a very good ghost movie, and \u201cOur House\u201d is not one of them. The problem with it is both narrative and tonal, where it\u2019s much too melodramatic to invest in the horror elements, and too horror to appreciate it as a tale of a grieving family struggling to keep it together. What we\u2019re left with is a pretty crummy, rather monotonous supernatural drama that we\u2019ve seen a dozen times in the past. Anthony Scott Burns seems to be aiming for a genre entry in the vein of \u201cWe Are Still Here,\u201d but it ends up feeling more like a tame sequel to \u201cWhite Noise.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Thomas Mann plays Ethan, a genius college student who is working on building a small machine that can generate electricity cheaply and wirelessly. When both of his parents die from an unexpected tragedy, Ethan is left to take care of his young brother Matt and little sister Becca. All seems to be going as planned until Ethan re-visits perfecting his machine in hopes fulfilling his dream. Without his realization the machine begins tapping in to an energy source that\u2019s otherworldly, and the trio soon realizes they\u2019re being stalked and tormented by a supernatural presence with nefarious purposes.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur House\u201d seems to be building to something over the course of its ninety minute run time but never actually delivers on anything it props up. There\u2019s a device involving a clock the youngest child turns every morning, and plot elements involving a television and a doll, and nothing ever feels completely delivered for the sake of scares. They\u2019re just introduced and then forgotten. What\u2019s worse is that director Burns seems to position this weird red herring that perhaps grief has struck this family so much that perhaps they might just be haunting one another; almost like he\u2019s creating his own modern interpretation of \u201cThe Haunting.\u201d The middle child Matt sits in his parents\u2019 room soaking in their environment before they passed, and younger sister Becca has a vivid imagination.<\/p>\n

All the while oldest brother Ethan is slowly unwinding from his obsession to complete his magic s\u00e9ance machine. It would have been so creepy if Burns ever bothered to explore the idea that everyone here are so broken by the death of their parents that they might just be imagining things. And that would be well and good if the movie didn\u2019t dismiss every hint of that by the time the last ten minutes rolls around. Ultimately \u201cOur House\u201d would have worked so much better as an examination of grief and its scary fall out. The paranormal elements just feel tacked on and injected for the sake of the genre pigeonhole, and once the shit hits the fan, the entire endeavor lands with a wet thud. There\u2019s some potential to be mined here with the themes of grief, and at least the performances are solid, but \u201cOur House\u201d just isn\u2019t worth the time spent.<\/p>\n

NOW IN SELECT THEATERS, VOD, AND VIA DIGITAL PLATFORMS.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n