The House on Pine Street [DVD] - Horror Thriller Movie for Halloween & Movie Nights - Perfect for Scary Film Lovers & Home Theater Entertainment

The reviews for this film are very mixed, but as a fan of horror (esp haunted house and possession films) I found it to be a small, fascinating, excellent production that is about psychological terror not always supernatural in nature, following a long line of female gothic narratives in both fiction and film. Our protagonist, Jennifer (or Jennie, depending upon who is addressing her--this seems an important detail in terms of her own agency and those who diminish it with a little girl's nickname) is a woman whom no one listens to--not her mother, not her husband, not even her best friend--and who is trapped in a situation she literally cannot escape from, at the center of which is an unwanted pregnancy. The central question is whether the house is independently malevolent, or if Jennifer is controlling events--or perhaps somewhere in between, i.e., Jennifer's own wishes and frustrations that drive what Walter, the fake psychic, calls the negative "energy" already present in the house. This uncertainty, for me, is what makes the film effective. In particular, I wa struck by the scene late in the film in which Walter verbally abuses her, shouting: "You hate everything. Why are you still here? Why don't you LEAVE?" Directly thereafter, one of the major tragedies in the film happens, which does, in fact, allow Jennifer to leave. Here the previously hapless Walter (who we learn has his own melancholy for a lost loved one, but who is a failed medium who can't connect with that loved one), communicates his own violent anger toward Jennifer, echoing the real-life desire of some men that women would just "disappear," apparent in the high incidence of violent crimes in our society against pregnant women, committed by someone they know. Another striking moment that brings together Jennifer's own frustrations/abuse and that of the supernatural forces of the house is when she yells "STOP" at a critical point in the house's violence against her. Here, she takes control of her surroundings (the house stops its abuse of her) just as her body goes out of her control (her water breaks). I don't think it's too much of a stretch to see this as a rape allegory, and Jennifer fighting back against her attacker. Given that we know nothing about the actual circumstances of her pregnancy (was it accidental? did Luke somehow compel her to conceive against her wishes? did she think she wanted a baby but then changed her mind), this scene is all the more powerful.Like other reviewers, I would like more on some other elements in the film--such as the mysterious twins next door, though I see their mother's tragic story (as she tells it to Jennifer) as another version of Jennifer's future that she is being compelled to accept, one marked by silence and loneliness as a parent. Jennifer's best friend has an apparently happy situation as a mother, though it is Brad who "sees" the ghosts in the house, and it is her friend who openly laments the work of motherhood. In both of those stories, there is no apparent father, which is interesting given how terrible Jennifer's husband Luke reveals himself to be. Ultimately this is a film that owes obvious debt to Rosemary's Baby (in one shot in which Luke and Jennifer's mother guide her down the hall, an actual visual debt), The Yellow Wallpaper, and a host of other fiction and film titles in which a woman's body is made to be out of her own control and which the horror is not supernatural, but all-too real (Malefecent is an interesting predecessor here). The portrayal of Jennifer's own apparent breakdown, and the discussions of her previous breakdown, combined with the circumstances and aftermath of the birth of her son late in the film, are potentially more terrifying than any of the numerous effective, subtle special effects that portray the more traditional horror of ghosts in haunted houses. In short, this film is not about a haunted house but rather a haunted life--as Jennifer says, "The house is in my head."