October 12, 2012
Horror/Thriller
R
United States
Director: Scott Derrickson
“Shhh…”
Four family members have bags over their heads and nooses around their necks. An intricate mechanism is set up to have a pole saw cut a branch, and as the branch falls, the family is lifted up into the air, where they hang until they die. This sets the feel for the rest of the movie.
Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) is a true crime writer who has set his sights on the subject of his new book: the Stevenson family who were hanged in their backyard and their missing daughter, Stephanie (Victoria Leigh). He hasn’t had a best seller since “Kentucky Blood”, and he’s determined to change that. Unbeknownst to his wife, Tracy (Juliet Rylance), he has moved his own family into the house the Stevenson’s once owned in a small town in Pennsylvania. Their kids, Trevor (Michael Hall D’Addario) and Ashley (Clare Foley), get taken along for the ride.
As Ellison is helping carry boxes into the house, he finds one already in the attic. When he opens it, he sees five home movies and a projector. Since the house was the scene of a gruesome murder, he decides they would be worth watching in case anything is left on them that could give him clues about the killer and the missing girl.
The films include the titles: “Family Hanging Out”, “BBQ”, “Pool Party”, “Sleepy Time”, and Lawn Work” – all with different years. He decides to watch “Family Hanging Out”, and it starts out rather normally: a family enjoying their time together in their yard. What it turns into, however, is the snuff film of the Stevenson family being hanged. This is a shock to Ellison, but he decides to see what other films there are and watches “BBQ”. This one shows a family fishing at a river, but quickly cuts to them tied up in their chained-up car in the garage, which is promptly set on fire. At this point, he contemplates calling the police, and actually does, but when he gets an answer, he remembers the book he wants to write and hangs up.
As the days go on and Ellison does more research into the murders, Trevor begins having night terrors. He’d had them when he was younger, and his parents thought he was over them, but now they’re back and worse than ever. Ellison finds Trevor first in a moving box, then again out in some bushes in the backyard. Tracy, who already struggles with her husband’s work, finds herself becoming short with him and arguing about what their move to that house is doing to their family. Of course, Ellison hasn’t told her whose house they’ve moved into, but she can sense something is wrong.
On top of this, Ellison starts hearing footsteps in the attic. He decides to take a look, and in doing so, finds a snake underneath the lid for the home movie box. Upon closer inspection of the lid, he notices stick-figure-like drawings of all the home movie murders, though they all seem to be drawn by different people. He’s startled out of his thoughts when he hears a bang behind him, signalling that the door to the attic closed. In a panic, he starts back for the door, but falls through the ceiling. The power had gone out, so he was using his phone’s flashlight to see and filming himself at the same time. When he goes back to look at the footage, he notices several small hands pushing him down as he falls. This is naturally unsettling to him, but not as much as what he sees when he delves further into the home movies.
During “Pool Party” where a family is tied to loungers and drowned in their pool, Ellison spots the face of someone (or something) in the water. It looks vaguely like a man, but the features are distorted… or disfigured. He also finds a strange symbol painted on a wall in the house of “Sleepy Time” right before that family gets their throats slit. But there’s one thing he does see in “Sleepy Time” that catches his eye: the family lived in St. Louis.
The local deputy (James Ransone) is a fan of Ellison, much to the chagrin of the sheriff (Fred Thompson), and becomes a useful part to Ellison’s personal investigation. The deputy (who comes to be known as Deputy So and So) delves into the murders in St. Louis, as well as the family who burned to death in their car. What he finds is that the Stevenson’s used to live in the house in St. Louis after that family had their throats cut. Something else that’s found out is that in each family murder, there is one child that goes missing.
Ellison struggles more and more with the growing knowledge, as well as Trevor’s night terrors and the sounds he keeps hearing through the house. On top of this, he’s woken up on several occasions by the sound of the projector turning on by itself, where the “Family Hanging Out” film is always playing. To further set him on edge, other things happen, like a dog showing up in his backyard and scaring him.
To help further the investigation along, the deputy suggests to Ellison that he should contact a professor who specializes in ancient lore. What Professor Jonas (Vincent D’Onofrio) finds out is that the symbol Ellison found is a worship of an obscure Pagan deity; specifically Bughuul. This particular deity is an eater of children’s souls and he tricks kids away from the real world into a “nether world” where he can consume their souls over time.
The sounds around the house are getting worse, and as Ellison checks around one night, he doesn’t see the ghosts of the missing kids running around and watching him. Little Ashley does, though. Ashley wants to grow up to be an artist, and she’s allowed to paint on her bedroom walls. Mostly, she paints horses, but she gets in trouble when Tracy finds a painting of a young girl on a tire swing in the hallway. When asked why she did it, Ashley explains that Stephanie told her that she didn’t want her painting in the room anymore, because that used to be her brother’s room. That’s when Tracy finds out what house they’re living in. You can imagine how well that conversation goes, though Ellison and Tracy believe it’s the overactive imagination of a little girl who heard the stories about the Stevenson’s rather than a ghost child talking to their daughter. Still, Tracy begs Ellison to stop, even through his refusals.
That all changes, though, when Ellison once more hears the projector turn on. He goes into his office, but when he sees the projector isn’t there, he follows the sound into the attic, where he sees it set up and playing with the ghost children sitting around it. He immediately takes the box with the movies and the projector and burns them, and when Tracy goes to see what he’s doing, he tells her to pack up some stuff and get the kids. They’re leaving.
They move back into their old house and everyone seems content, even with the deputy continuously trying to call and Ellison always ignoring him. He sets up his laptop in his office and opens his emails to see one from Jonas. He clicks on the file to see pictures of strange engravings. Pictures he’s seen before. Pictures almost exactly like the home movie murders. He video calls Jonas, where the professor explains to him that children who see these particular images are more vulnerable to Bughuul’s influence. Ellison doesn’t think much of it at first, but then the deputy calls again. This time, Ellison answers, and what the deputy has to tell him makes his blood run cold.
The deputy did some more digging through the other murders and found out that each of the families that were killed had previously lived in the house where a murder took place. Meaning, Ellison and his family moving put him directly into the pattern of the serial ritualistic killer.
And that’s not all. While Ellison was moving some boxes into the attic, he sees another one that’s very familiar: one that has home movies. Out of fear and frustration, he shakes the contents out of the box and finds something new. This time, there is a package with “extended cut endings” written on it. With his curiosity getting the better of him, he plays them, where he finds that the “missing” kids are the ones who committed the murders of their families.
Now he’s feeling sick, but not just from the discovery. He finds traces of a glowing, green drug in his coffee cup and passes out. When he wakes up, he has duct tape over his mouth and he’s tied up. He can see Tracy, who is also tied up. Ashley comes forward dragging an axe, and tells her father that she’ll “make him famous again”. Then she lifts up a camera and begins filming.
The end shows Ashley drawing on the box lid of her own home movie, which has been given the name, “House Painting”. In the film, we see blood spattered across the walls, with pictures including a horse and dog. Then Bughuul (Nicholas King) picks her up and carries her into the projection screen.
There’s a lot to this movie, I realize, but I wanted to give you a good feel of it. It tops as one of my favorite horror films, because it has so much to it. The ghosts, the ancient gods, the murder, the mystery. I do wish that it had ended without it showing Bughuul carrying Ashley into the projection screen, because I feel like it takes away from the atrocity of what she’s done. Still, it is a great movie with it’s constant creepy vibe and fair share of jump scares, and I highly recommend it.
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