The House of the Devil (2009)

In 1983, financially struggling college student Samantha Hughes takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse. She slowly realizes her clients harbor a terrifying secret, putting her life in mortal danger.

Director:

Ti West

Writer:

Ti West

Stars:

Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov

3 wins & 6 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Jocelin Donahue	...	Samantha
Tom Noonan	...	Mr. Ulman
Mary Woronov	...	Mrs. Ulman
Greta Gerwig	...	Megan
AJ Bowen	...	Victor Ulman
Dee Wallace	...	Landlady
Heather Robb	...	Roommate
Darryl Nau	...	Random Guy
Brenda Cooney	...	Nurse
Danielle Noe	...	Mother
Mary B. McCann	...	Elaine Cross (as Mary McCann)
John Speredakos	...	Ted Stephen
Lena Dunham	...	911 Operator (voice)
Graham Reznick	...	Local DJ (voice)
Ti West	...	Favorite Teacher

Storyline

In 1983, financially struggling college student Samantha Hughes takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse. She slowly realizes her clients harbor a terrifying secret, putting her life in mortal danger.

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Plot Keywords:

retro horror | retro | lunar eclipse | pregnant | female protagonist | 

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Taglines:

Talk on the Phone. Finish Your Homework. Watch TV. Die.

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Genres:

Horror | Mystery

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for some bloody violence

Did You Know?

Trivia

When Samantha orders a pizza, the pizza guy asks if she wants a pizza with extra anchovies. This is a very subtle nod to the Patrick Dempsey comedy, Loverboy (1989). The extra anchovies reference in that film meant that the delivery boy would be delivering a lot more than pizzas.

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Goofs

The Connecticut license plates used in the film were not issued until 2000. In the 80s, when the film is set, passenger cars would generally have plates with white letters/numbers on a solid blue background, not the "blue fade" design currently in use and shown in the film.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Landlady: I can tell you like it.
Samantha: Oh, I love it. It's perfect.
Landlady: Well, great. It's such a neat place. You know, I showed it to another girl this morning, but to be honest, I didn't like her very much. She looked like trouble, and I'm way too old to be dealing with all that nonsense. I go a lot on my gut feelings, and I have a good one about you. You remind me of my daughter.

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Crazy Credits

Special Thanks: Goatse & Tubgirl

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Connections

Featured in WatchMojo: Top 10 Terrifying Horror Movies That Don't Rely on Jump Scares (2019)

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Soundtracks

Chopsticks
(uncredited)
Music by Euphemia Allen
Picked out by Jocelin Donahue

User Reviews

Like a Lost Horror Classic from 1982

If the producers of this film were smart, they would deny that Ti West wrote and directed this film and claim that it was a lost film of the early eighties that they found in a drawer at Paramount. Say a lost Tobe Hooper film that Tobe did right before doing Poltergeist. Something that Steven Spielberg bought to keep from competing with Poltergeist and shoved in a drawer somewhere.

Because it's that good. The House of the Devil feels like it should have been released back in 1982, from the feathered hair of the leads, to the Walkman, to the music and sound, to the slow build of the suspense, to the vintage titles. It is even a mash-up of the late seventies obsessions with baby-sitters in peril (When a Stranger Calls) and satanism in the suburbs (The Omen). Most importantly, it has all the slow-burn intensity of the great horror films of that period.

The baby-sitter in peril is Samantha (Jocelin Donahue). A college student, she is doing baby-sitting gigs because she needs money for a new apartment and desperately wants to get out of her dorm. Her roommate is a sex-addict and a slob and Samantha as a neat-freak germaphobe finds both behaviours repulsive. The job that Samantha ends up taking, on the night of a full lunar eclipse, is obviously (cue Admiral Ackbar) a trap, more obvious to the audience than to Samantha because we know that the name of the film is The House of the Devil, because her employer is Tom Noonan, the original Red Dragon from Michael Mann's Manhunter and because Samantha is too self-absorbed to notice that she is in danger.

There is a danger to read too much into it, but there is a very real sense that this film is pitched perfectly at the divide between the sex and drugs disco party lifestyle of the Seventies and the money-obsessed, self-absorbed Eighties.

There is even a sense in which the film (with the benefit of filmmaker hindsight) acts as a horror metaphor explaining how the drugs and sex excesses of the Seventies led to the health catastrophes of the Eighties, especially AIDS. Samantha may not know exactly why she is a germaphobe, nor why she is so freaked out by the house she is sitting at, but her anxieties are well-placed.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? -William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

Details

Official Sites:

Official site Official soundtrack site

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

4 May 2012 (Taiwan)

Also Known As:

House of the Devil

Filming Locations:

Lakeville, Connecticut, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$900,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$25,195, 1 November 2009

Gross USA:

$101,215

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$101,215

Company Credits

Production Co:

MPI Media Group, Constructovision, RingTheJing Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

95 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1