Our House is a 2018 horror film about a young man who is trying to invent a wireless electricity device when he realizes that instead he has invoked the spirit world.
Our House is based on the 2010 microbudget independent film Phasma Ex Machina (aka Ghost from the Machine) directed by Matt Osterman. While I haven’t seen that film, Our House is said to have changed the focus of the original, reimagined by director Anthony Scott Burns, centered on a young man dealing with trauma and tragedy. Does it make it better? Sometimes films can be surprise you, especially at the Fantasia Film Festival, yet disappointingly, Our House is just another cliché-ridden and predictable horror film that falls into a lot of trope-y territory, spending a lot of time doing things that have already been done many times before, often more effectively.
The story follows a family trying to heal after the parents get into an accident and pass away. This leads to significant changes for Ethan (Thomas Mann) a young man who leaves his promising education at MIT, distancing himself from his beautiful girlfriend Hannah (Nicola Peltz) and going back home to work as a cashier to take care of his younger brother Matt (Percy Hynes White) and little sister Becca (Kate Moyer). The story takes its time in establishing the dynamics of these relationships, however, the horror that eventually follows is standard stuff, with familiar trails of black smoke and children seeing spirits and mistaking them for imaginary friends.
That’s really half the problem, where moody atmosphere and jumpscares a plenty might have some desired effect, but still feel entirely generic with predictable frights from around every corner. All things scary are timed exactly as you expect, with most ending up right in the the trailer, which I’ll serve as a warning, for if you do plan on seeing this, make sure to skip the previews.
The only redeeming part of Our House is its young cast. A few of them are familiar with Mann seen in last year’s Kong: Skull Island and Peltz from Transformers: Age of Extinction. Mann has done horror before, though this one is one of the more engaging roles of his career. White and Moyer do decent work, further helping to keeping the on-screen relationships at least the most compelling.
Admittedly, Our House has some good ideas and while the source material that inspired it earned solid reviews, frustratingly, it just doesn’t hit the horror like it should. Even with a great cast, there’s no saving this from being one more lackluster title in a growing lot of them. Worse is the “twist” ending that can be seen a mile away. Perhaps it might satisfy entry-level horror viewers but for genre veterans, it is too much of the same.
Our House releases in theatres and VOD July 27.