As the end of October approaches, everyone will be looking for great horror movies to watch at Halloween. Prime Video has a lot of great choices for anyone eager to jump into the genre, including classics like Creature From the Black Lagoon, the underrated Phantasm, plus Candyman, Return of the Living Dead, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. One of the absolute scariest movies of the past two decades, however, is hiding in plain sight on Prime Video, and it will still chill you to the bone if you’re watching alone on a cold autumn night.
Before he was making headlines with his “X” trilogy, filmmaker Ti West made a low-key throwback horror movie with 2009’s The House of the Devil. Critically acclaimed upon its debut, the film had a very limited theatrical release and didn’t really find its way in front of horror fans until it premiered on home media. Designed to feel like a movie from a different time, The House of the Devil eschewed modern horror conventions like flashy jump scares and made a name for itself as a slow-burning horror movie that dared the audience to exercise patience. In doing so, it became one of the scariest of the era.
The House of the Devil’s Scares Make You Wait
Central to the story is Jocelin Donahue as Sam, a broke college student who takes a babysitting job in a creepy house on the edge of town for some quick money. When she arrives, Sam learns that this isn’t actually babysitting, but actually keeping an eye on the mother of Mrs. Ulman, who is upstairs resting and remains unseen for most of the film. Things don’t get less creepy after this reveal, as the house’s creaks and moans give way to bizarre secrets and terrifying reveals.
Set in the 1980s, The House of the Devil fully utilizes the backdrop of the “satanic panic,” when the public at large was easily duped into believing stories of secret devil worshippers could be hiding in plain sight. News stories were frequent at the time about day cares having secret satanic rituals with the children, where murders were often pegged as being tied to satanism rather than any human cause. Furthermore, games like Dungeons & Dragons and listening to heavy metal music were seen as gateways to Satanism.
The House of the Devil utilizes these larger context clues, the fear of secret cults in quiet neighborhoods, and the idea of ritual sacrifice happening under the public’s nose, to its advantage. The seeds are planted early, so when one of the film’s biggest surprises occurs midway through, it forces you to remember what sandbox West is playing in. That said, the movie is not going to continuously remind you that it’s a horror film at first, playing it slow and steady for much of its runtime as we simply watch Sam navigate the house. The House of the Devil is a film that rewards patience, and by the film’s end, its conclusion will suckerpunch you.
The House of the Devil Feels Like a Lost Movie
As noted, The House of the Devil is set in the 1980s and from the first frame lets the audience know that this is a throwback movie. Like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre before it, the film used a title card to imply that everything audiences are about to see is based in reality. To take it a step further, though, the production of the film is steeped in filmmaking techniques of the era to really sell the period motif.
West and his director of photography, Eliot Rockett, shot the film using 16mm cameras, giving a grainy look to the entire picture and one that makes it fit in with actual horror movies of the 1980s. Furthermore, the film utilizes 1980s songs and notable actors of the era like Tom Noonan and Dee Wallace, all of which gives The House of the Devil the feel of being totally authentic.
With all these aesthetic choices, The House of the Devil feels like a movie plucked out of the time that it’s set, not one that was released the same year as Drag Me to Hell, Saw VI, and The Human Centipede. The visual style of the film makes it feel like something that should have been found in video store racks and passed around as a VHS tape. If anything, this makes its major surprises have even more of an impact, as the film doesn’t have a modern look to make it feel “safe.”
Other Movies Like The House of the Devil
Slow-burn horror isn’t for everyone, but for genre fans who are tolerant of a story taking its time to get to the scares, gore, and beasts, The House of the Devil is in good company. Ti West’s follow-up to the film is another slow-burning horror film, 2011’s The Innkeepers. Even more recently, though, Zach Cregger’s Barbarian is a horror movie that keeps you guessing, and if you want to watch a horror heroine walk into a terrifying house just like The House of the Devil, you can’t do much better. There is also, of course, the granddaddy of satanic slow-burn horror movies, which is a clear influence on The House of the Devil, 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby.
Even though there are films that have a similar feeling to The House of the Devil, the fact that it is a modern movie designed to look and play like something from the era that it’s set in really sets it apart. Ti West remains one of the best American horror directors and though his more recent contributions to the genre have gone on to mainstream acclaim, this 2009 movie is one that should be on your watchlist for Halloween. Watch it with the lights off, and don’t get up to investigate those creaky doors you might hear.