The House on Pine Street, 2015.
Directed by Aaron Keeling and Austin Keeling.
Starring Emily Goss, Taylor Bottles, Cathy Barnett, Natalie Pellegrini, Tisha Swart-Entwistle and Jim Korinke.
SYNOPSIS:
Parents-to-be Jennifer and Luke move from Chicago to Kansas and begin to experience spooky goings on in their new house.
The House on Pine Street is not, as its title may suggest, a throwback to the video nasty era or a rape/revenge shocker but a psychological horror/thriller in the same vein as Rosemary’s Baby, tapping into the fears and expectations of impending motherhood, as well as settling into new environments with new people.
Jennifer Branagan (Emily Goss) and her husband Luke (the excellently named Taylor Bottles) have moved from Chicago to Kansas on a temporary basis. While Luke is putting a positive spin on everything, Jennifer isn’t too happy about the move and is desperate to get back to Chicago. It turns out that Jennifer has had a previous emotional breakdown which isn’t helped by her overbearing mother Meredith (Cathy Barnett) forcing herself into the lives of the young parents-to-be.
While Luke is out all day Jennifer is at home and begins to feel she is not alone as things start to move around on their own, she hears all sorts of knocking and banging and the neighbours appear to be a little creepy around her. And what with her previous breakdown Luke isn’t too quick to believe her when she claims she is seeing people in the house.
Not the most original setup for a horror movie it’s fair to say, and at 147 minutes long and with not a lot in the way of action, The House on Pine Street has to rely on atmosphere to keep things moving along. To its credit it does present its terrors in a more natural way than most other modern paranormal movies, the use of sound proving to be more effective than the BOO!-style jump scares that have found favour with younger audiences in recent years.
Perhaps the reason for this is partly budgetry but the filmmakers do use what they have very well, resorting to the jump scares sparingly and, by consequence, more effectively than needlessly having to have something happen every few minutes.
Credit also to the actors who do a more than capable job of carrying the movie, not only in their line delivery – and some of the dialogue is a bit naff – but also in their physical performance. Emily Goss in particular gives a very subtle but detailed portrayal of a woman experiencing something that she cannot fathom, her facial tics and expressions giving more than the script does and allowing the audience to sympathise with her when nobody else believes what she is going through. The sense of paranoia that is expressed through her performance and the way certain shots are framed is also reminiscent of Rosemary’s Baby and helps to keep up the unnerving atmosphere.
However, the overlong running time does prove to be problematic as there are moments where the film lags when it should be tense and edgy and a bit more editing could have worked wonders in making the film a little more engrossing, especially towards the end when it seems to run out of steam and ends on a typically unsatisfactory (for modern supernatural movies) note. Nevertheless, for the most part The House on Pine Street is a solid enough haunted house chiller with some well executed scares that don’t treat the audience as dumb or rely on clichéd shock tactics to work. It will be interesting to see if filmmakers Aaron and Austin Keeling get the chance to show what they can do with a bigger budget in the future because although it’s not very original and is over long before the final scene, as a calling card for the directors it shows some promise for greater things to come.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
https://youtu.be/0aIsNl6XwEk?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published February 1, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
