Caitlyn Nakatsukasa | Freelancer
Matt Angel’s movie “The Open House” was released on Netflix on Jan. 19.
In “The Open House”, a mother, Naomi, played by Piercy Dalton, and her son Logan, played by Dylan Minnette, temporarily move into a family member’s home temporarily after the sudden passing of Logan’s s father. However, the house is in the process of being sold, meaning there are many open house events taking place, resulting in different people showing up to the house. After moving in they notice strange events happening in their home. These occurrences include door banging, objects moving and shadows passing by. As the characters encounter uncanny people around town and witness peculiar episodes at the home, they start to believe there’s someone always around them everywhere they go.
I’ll be honest; if I had to make a list of all the horror movies I’ve watched ranked from best to worst, this movie would probably be on the bottom half of that list. I felt as though the plot line was inadequate. Many of the scenes didn’t make sense and didn’t tie into the main storyline. The viewers were never given a backstory for the antagonist, so they’re left hanging throughout the movie. There are jump-scare scenes every so often but they’re often predictable and sometimes illogical. The ending of the movie was the most frustrating. It lacked depth and didn’t answer any questions I had throughout the movie — it didn’t connect with the any of the previous scenes I had been confused about.
Despite my brutal opinion of the movie, I thought the best part about “The Open House” was the actors immense talents to pull their work off. I loved their acting — I felt the emotions resonate through the screen and could relate to the characters a lot. If you’re an avid watcher of Netflix, you may be familiar with the appearance of Minnette, who starred in Netflix’s show “13 Reasons Why.” Minnette and Dalton did a splendid performance portraying their characters in the movie. They work well in the horror genre and it was exciting to see familiar actors again.
“The Open House” has great actors but lacks enough premise for a basic storyline. It would’ve been better if they added background stories to the characters, so they’d be more relatable to the storyline or build tension of scary scenes that could tie into upcoming events. If you are a fan of cliché horror movies this may be a suitable movie of your choice.
Contact the author at cnakatsukasa15@wou.edu
Photo by: netflix.com
