Saturday, September 12, 2020

Open House (2010)

 What was surprising about this film was that even though the plot was sort of ridiculous, the execution, acting and direction were of good quality. The fact that it was so well-made actually made up for holes in the story and it turned out to be a good thriller.

It concerns a woman who is trying to sell her house after the break-up of a relationship, I think with her husband but whether they are married or not I'm not sure. A man somehow gets in the house and traps her in a sort of crawl space between floors in the basement, handy since it has a door he can lock. He commits several murders with a knife and is joined by a woman. At first you might believe they are romantically involved but it turns out she is as murderous as he is, infact probably more so since he has to cover up after her murders. She seduces the woman's partner and kills him. Turns out that the killers are actually brother and sister.

The woman thinks the owner of the house has been killed but instead the man is keeping her downstairs and bringing her up during the day while his sister is out.

Murdering people is easy in this film, there are no police involved at all. No difficult questions and no detectives sniffing around. Despite they are occupying a house that is not theirs and on the property market. Someone from the company she works for leaves a message on her answerphone. The house cleaners turn up. The female owner tries to get rid of them, slipping a piece of paper into one of the cleaners hands that reads "call police". He reads this and recognises the situation and starts to ask his wife to leave but at this point the male murderer suspects something is wrong and kills both cleaners. He then beats the woman with his belt.

The female owner tries a different approach and tries to convince the man to leave his sister and run away with her. While they are upstairs discussing this, the sister unexpectedly comes back with the estate agent. The female hides in a wardrobe. The sister allows the estate agent to show her the house, she insists on seeing the bedrooms. While in the same bedroom as the female owner the sister tries to seduce the estate agent. The brother comes out of the bedroom and slashes the estate agents throat to the annoyance of his sister, she's concerned about blood seeping through the floorboards.

In the evening they invite guests over. People we've seen before who are friends of the owners. Well, it's not the type of house party I would want to go to, lets leave it there! Overall,this film shows that even with a script that has lots of holes in it, you can make a decent thriller.



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