The Open House (2018)

So I’ll put my hands up and say I read a few reviews of the Open House prior to sitting down and watching it. And they didn’t make pleasant reading. But in my naive ways I was thinking, well critics have been wrong before, let’s see for myself.

I should’ve steered clear.

The Open House is barely a film. There’s no overarching narrative, no character development, no coherent logic to it, It’s baffling how a film like this gets made.

Scenes just happen. We get a quick flash of a forward motion here or there, but it’s over as soon as it arrives. There’s spooky goings on in this giant mansion we find ourselves in. Oh no never mind I’ve fixed it. Night.

It’s near criminal how far The Open House goes to underwhelm.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s start at the beginning. And yes this time there will be spoilers. Don’t worry though, you’re not going to care.

We start on a regular family setting, our main protagonist, Dylan Minnette (from Netflix’s own compelling but uneven 13 Reasons Why) likes running and his Dad likes timing him. After a brief argument with the Mum character (Piercey Dalton, who is given nothing to work with here) over nothing, the Dad gets run over and killed (presumably we never actually see anything happen).

Now here’s where our main problems start. We’re only 10-15 minutes into the film here and we’ve found out around 3 things about our main characters;

The Dad has recently passed away

The kid likes running

The kid wears contact lenses

If there are any others please let me know immediately but this is what I took from the introduction to our main characters.

So what are we in for? Some psychological thriller where the Dad is stalking the family around this giant mansion, reminding them of the pain they suffered?

Well no because that would be a film. Where characters have emotions and have problems that they need to deal with. The mom/kid share once scene where they talk (read argue) about their loss. Which is never resolved and furthers neither character in any way shape or form. And does nothing to warm you as the audience to either character.

But this is still a horror thriller correct? Well if you count spooky boilers being turned off (a well that is gone too far too many times throughout the film) and scary estate agents popping out of nowhere despite people actively shouting for them.

There are no suspenseful build up to any scare. Random things just seem to happen that are accompanied by a loud bang. Then we move on.

More to the point, there is one line of dialogue in the middle of the film that tells you why open houses are spooky. The idea of letting strangers wander round your house. That is a genuine line in this film. As if to remind you that you are in fact watching a horror movie. It’s baffling.

And what is it all in service of? Do we get a reward for sitting through all the shots of workman boots, of mysteriously moving bowls of cereal or footage of the same corridor of a spooky basement ? Do we get to see the face, the identity of the individual that felt the need to seemingly randomly haunt this poor annoying down on their luck family?

No.

There’s nothing here. No, ‘it was him all along moment’. No ‘so that’s why he’s there’. Not even a fucking ancient Native American burial site. There’s nothing.

There’s no reading between the lines, no looking into the meaning of an open house, no call back to a tragedy. Nothing.

The Open House is one hour and twenty five minutes of nothing. If you’re looking for a better time on Netflix there’s a two hour shot of a fireplace that will sort you out.

5/100

Positive – Wherever that is in Canada is nice looking.

Negative – Everything else

I’m going to try and find a film I like next time. Promise.