Another Great Jennifer Lawrence Turn Can’t Save ‘House at the End of the Street’

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Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – “House at the End of the Street” is the kind of bland, mediocre thriller that’s tough to review in the sense that it’s difficult to put a shoulder shrug into words. How can I turn “meh” into a full review? In all seriousness, actress Jennifer Lawrence does her best to elevate this dull material but she can’t save a stupid script and direction that thinks turning a thriller into a 1990s music video is the way to add honest scares.

Shot entirely on digital handheld shaky cameras that are intercut with slo-mo shots and other post-production tricks meant to heighten tension but merely annoy instead, “House at the End of the Street” tells a relatively straightforward story with a twist that most audiences will see coming but could be a nice “gotcha” moment for those who don’t. The great Lawrence, who has already been Oscar-nominated once for “Winter’s Bone” and is reportedly going to repeat that feat for this Fall’s “Silver Linings Playbook,” is well above this material as Elissa, a sweet girl who moves to a new town with her single mother Sarah (Elisabeth Shue).

House at the End of the Street
Photo credit: Sony Pictures

Before they can even get acclimated, Elissa and Sarah hear all about the town urban legend. Four years earlier, a girl named Carrie Anne pulled a Lizzie Borden on her parents, killing them in the middle of the night before disappearing herself. Rumors are that she still lives in the woods. Meanwhile, Carrie Anne’s brother Ryan (Max Theriot) is the town loner, still living in the house where his parents were killed and avoiding the local teens who like to mock and bully him.

Elissa is drawn to loners. While the town jock first thinks he has a chance with her, it is the sweet Ryan to whom our heroine is drawn. As the film gets a little like a standard romantic teen drama, we learn that Ryan is keeping Carrie Anne trapped in his basement behind locked doors and under sedation. She tries to escape a couple of times and seems like she may be a true danger to Elissa. I say “seems” because anyone who has seen a movie before will know that Ryan hides a secret or two himself and that Elissa should probably listen to her mom’s warnings about dating older boys.

House at the End of the Street
Photo credit: Sony Pictures

Most of “House at the End of the Street” is just boring. And to try and alleviate that boredom, director Mark Tonderai cuts the thing like a Nine Inch Nails video from the mid-‘90s but the tricks merely serve to add to the realization that there’s no actual tension here. We know nothing serious is going to happen to Elissa and she’s not even in any faux movie danger for most of the film. In fact, so much of “House” is spent on minor moments like Elissa’s love life, her practice for Battle of the Bands, or her spats with her mom that the piece nearly approaches the “slow burn” genre of horror (as made recently famous by Ti West in flicks like “House of the Devil” and “The Innkeepers”) but Tonderai can’t commit to that concept. “Street” might have worked if it played as straight teen romance until revealing its character’s secrets in the final act. But it’s constantly playing games like having POV shots from the woods that make no sense in retrospect or ominous music on the soundtrack when nothing dangerous is actually happening.

House at the End of the Street
Photo credit: Sony Pictures

It’s actually kind of a miracle that Jennifer Lawrence is a remarkable enough actress that she can keep this “House” from completely collapsing. She actually tries to turn this into a character instead of using the scream movie heroine crutches that so many lesser actresses would have relied on. She’s easily the best thing about the movie although, to be fair, Shue certainly isn’t bad here by any stretch. She’s just underutilized. As for Theriot, he’s decent as well even if his character is woefully inconsistent.

No, none of the cast is to blame. The problems here lay at the feet of writer David Loucka and director Mark Tonderai who never get a grip on the material in a way that would give it any personality. They mistake camera tricks for style and plot twists for screenwriting. And the ease with which most audiences will see through these mistakes should make “House at the End of the Street” disappear from theaters rapidly. In the end, it will be little more than a trivia answer. What movie did Jennifer Lawrence release between her smash hit “The Hunger Games” and the Oscar she won for “Silver Linings Playbook”? No one will blame you when you forget the answer.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com