The House on Haunted Hill (DiVX Movie Review)

Yet another "horror" movie? No, not this time. As you can read on my opinion about "The Blair Witch Project" (day 091100), I have a very strict definition of "horror" and "The House on Haunted Hill" (THOHH) simply does NOT fit.

I think that THOHH is a comedy - a great dark comedy!

This is the history of a millionaire's birthday party. The man on celebration is Steven Price (Geoffrey Rush) who is in the entertainment business. He sells thrills, such as the ones you can find in the world's best roller coasters.

Steven Price is married to Evelyn (Famke Janssen - read about "The Faculty" on day 061000), with whom he hasn't the best of the relations. Still, Evelyn is also coming to his strange party, where he is offering 1 million USD, to those who can *survive* the entire night on a former mental hospital...

One party. One creepy abandoned hospital. One angry wife; and four unknown (surprised) guests, that neither Steven, nor Evelyn, admits to have invited, though there were effective plans for bringing in "friends". Only you, the viewer, know that the invitations were the "initiative" of a personal computer...

The guests, who have come just for the money, are Eddie Baker (former athlete), Donald Blackburn (physician), Melissa Marr (can't really tell what her profession was), and Jennifer Jenzen (an executive with a secret side).

The first thing the guests are to notice is that Evelyn HATES her husband; second thing is that or there are too many stupid tricks involved, or there is something deeply wrong with the place, as every window and outside-door gets locked and blocked with some kind of external walls!

In order to find out what is going on, the "prisioners" start sniffing around the old hospital rooms. During these peeks, strange things happen, such as video cameras recording pictures that are not seen by the eye. Most of the time, these pictures show terrible tortures done to the old hospital's patients, in order to "treat" their mental problems... but there are also disturbing monsters, looking for naive blondes, when walking alone with a DV camera on dark places... Snatch! One victim.

Steven Price is so surprised with the first disappearance, that we - the spectators - have the luxury to spot him going to a secret hideout, where he was to meet a "Special Effects" dude, convinced that the death-as-shown-on-DV was just (another?) product of the one he hired. Unfortunately, the employee is dead, with half of his face missing.

From this moment on, the people inside the house get very suspicious about each other. Evelyn stresses to the point of firing a gun against Steven, and some of the guest will become victims of the torture machines. Linear? Previewable? Not at all! Surprisingly, the movie twists more than a running snake and, at least for two occasions, it is absolutely impossible NOT to get surprised!!

For short, THOHH evolves to a "cat chases mouse" movie: evil against humans. You are first made to believe that evil is (Steven Price) human, but later the "unnatural" causes get very obvious, though even the most unsuspecting humans have some sort surprise for you...

Entertaining. Horror for some; dark comedy, for me.

My DiVX file is a very good rip of the original R1 DVD. The motion never loses sync with the audio; the pixels-are-king scenes don't exist; and the jumpy portions are very rare and inoffensive.