House | |
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Theatrical release poster
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Directed by | Robby Henson |
Produced by | Joe Goodman Bobby Neutz Michael Webber Ralph Winter |
Screenplay by | Rob Green |
Based on |
House by Ted Dekker Frank E. Peretti |
Starring |
Michael Madsen Reynaldo Rosales Heidi Dippold Julie Ann Emery J.P. Davis Leslie Easterbrook Lew Temple Bill Moseley |
Music by | David E. Russo |
Cinematography | Marcin Koszałka |
Edited by | Andrea Bottigliero |
Distributed by |
Lions Gate Entertainment Roadside Attractions |
Release date
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Running time
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88 minutes |
Country | Poland United States |
Language | English |
House is a 2008 horror film directed by Robby Henson, starring Reynaldo Rosales, Heidi Dippold and Michael Madsen. It is based on the novel of the same name by Frank E. Peretti and Ted Dekker. It covers the events that take place one night in an old, rustic inn in Alabama, where four guests and three owners find themselves locked in by a homicidical maniac. The maniac claims to have killed God and threatens to murder all seven of them, unless they produce the dead body of one of them by dawn.
In the prologue, the film depicts a panicky man who, for unknown reasons, murders his wife with a shotgun. The main storyline opens with Jack and Stephanie, a bickering young couple, who are lost while driving through the backwoods. We soon learn that they are on their way to meet a marriage counselor.
After getting bad directions from a state trooper, the couple get into a car accident when they run over some spiked metal in the road, which Jack dismisses as discarded scrap metal; they find another car which has experienced the same fate, but the occupants are missing. Forced to proceed on foot, Jack and Stephanie find the gothic Wayside Inn, where they try to phone for help. At the inn, they meet the occupants of the other car, the engaged couple Leslie and Randy. Because the phones are inoperative, both couples are forced to spend the night at the inn, which is staffed only by the eccentric proprieter Betty, her creepy son Pete (who develops an instant attraction for Leslie), and the gruff caretaker Stewart.
After a tense dinner, in which personalities clash, the group is terrorized by a legendary local figure, the Tin Man. Armed with a shotgun, the Tin Man attempts to get into the Wayside Inn. The staff locks the Tin Man out, and he responds by giving them a message scrawled on the side of a tin can. The message declares that he will kill everyone in the house unless they give him one dead body by sunrise. The staff, blaming their guests for attracting the Tin Man's attention, attempts to lock them in the freezing meat locker, threatening to leave them there for weeks. A fight ensues, and the guests realize that there is a supernatural presence in the house when Betty is injured in the struggle and bleeds black fog.
The couples escape the meat locker, but are unable to leave the house, which assaults them with terrifying visions involving their worst memories. For Jack and Stephanie, the visions involve their daughter, who died after falling through the ice in a skating accident. For Randy, the visions involve his abusive father. For Leslie, the visions involve an uncle named Pete, who sexually abused her when she was a little girl; these visions are intensified by the similar lusts of Pete who lives at the Wayside Inn.