HOUSE OF DARKNESS (2022)

Studio:     Saban Films
Director:    Neil LaBute
Writer:     Neil LaBute
Producer:  Daryl Freimark, Tim Harms, Neil LaBute, Shaun Sanghani
Stars:     Justin Long, Kate Bosworth, Gia Crovatin, Lucy Walters

Review Score:

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Summary:

After hooking up in a bar, a man goes home with a woman who turns out to be part of a seductive vampire plot.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

After meeting at a bar, Hap Jackson goes back to Mina Murray’s remote, castle-like estate. While Mina is out of the room fixing drinks, Hap calls a male friend to brag about his hookup.

Following an evening of drinking, kissing, and couched conversation, Mina begins unbuckling Hap’s pants. Mina’s sister Lucy unexpectedly interrupts. Hap gets the idea that he might have a threesome with both women.

Mina exits the room to get more drinks. Hap and Lucy have a private conversation.

Hap briefly falls asleep. Hap has a nightmare where he is imprisoned in a subterranean cave with a pile of shoes indicating he is another in a long line of victims.

After he wakes, Lucy takes Hap on a tour of the manor. Mina eventually rejoins them and they return to the sitting room.

Lucy and Mina propose exchanging ghost stories. Hap adlibs a glib story about a man who has a threesome with two sisters.

Lucy responds by telling a tale of wronged women who sought vengeance on men who raped them and who continue pursuing sexual predators across the world. Hap becomes further disturbed when Lucy mentions a cave like the one he saw in his nightmare.

A third sister, Nora, enters the room. Realizing the women intend to teach him a morality lesson, Hap becomes combative and tries to leave. Revealing they are vampires, Mina, Lucy, and Nora use their supernatural powers to tear apart Hap with their fangs.

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Review:

Once upon a time, I had an occasion to be in playwright/filmmaker Neil LaBute’s office. He wasn’t there on that particular day. Regardless, what stands out to me about my visit was a painting hanging behind LaBute’s desk. It was a multidimensional piece of artwork. The front portion depicted a woman’s neck, and there was a slash in the canvas that cut across her throat. Inside the open space of the frame were rows of red spheres that resembled large pomegranate seeds. The effect, obviously, was to make it appear as though the woman suffered a bloody gash. I imagined the intention behind displaying this quasi-controversial piece might be to make guests feel uneasy when they saw this arresting image looming above LaBute’s head.

Sorry, what was that? Oh, you’re wondering how that anecdote has anything to do with a review for LaBute’s experimental, horror-tinged chamber drama “House of Darkness?” Yeah, see, that’s the thing. Every piece of plotting feels disjointed and only peripherally related at best to the core story of a man attempting to hook up with a woman whose hidden intentions are even more predatory than his. The best way to illustrate the movie’s aggressive aimlessness was to tell my own tale that’s only tangentially connected to themes of vampirism and misogyny. Unfortunately, the better way to fully reflect the film’s dithering dullness would be to stretch my story to 90 minutes, except I could never be as cruel as LaBute when it comes to disrespecting an audience’s time.

“House of Darkness” purports to be loosely based on “Dracula” or, more specifically, the ‘Brides of Dracula’ portion of Bram Stoker’s fiction. That basis is so loose that the waistband retains no elastic at all, leaving the film’s pants to crumple around its ankles in embarrassment.

LaBute’s version starts with Hap Jackson (Justin Long) going home with Mina Murray (Kate Bosworth) following a casual bar pickup. For a few minutes, the two of them sit in a car talking. Then they exit the car and continue their conversation while admiring the exterior of Mina’s manor. At the 10-minute mark, they move their verbal meandering to a sitting room indoors where “House of Darkness” can more comfortably ramble for 30 more minutes of Hap calling a friend to brag about his conquest, a power outage inspiring Hap’s recollection of his dad owning a generator, and other innocuous interactions of highly questionable narrative value.

Roughly 40 minutes into the duo’s sleepy discourse, Mina’s sister Lucy (Gia Crovatin) interrupts. Mina excuses herself to fix more drinks, leaving Lucy to take her place as the mouth meeting Hap’s words with roundabout replies and yawn-worthy vocabulary vomits. A nightmare sequence gets shoved in here for the smallest semblance of shock value. Otherwise, it’s another 20 minutes of inconsequential musings until Mina returns and the tête-à-tête adds a third tête so the trio can continue talking together.

For reasons only LaBute would know, a third sister (Lucy Walters) needlessly joins the escalating exchange with less than ten minutes to go until end credits. The anemic push-pull between Hap’s horniness and the women’s literal thirst for vengeance then comes to its painfully predictable conclusion with only the second sequence of visceral horror. With that, “House of Darkness” exhausts its breathless supply of chatter and finally finishes its successful attempt at suicide by tedium.

Superficially speaking, “House of Darkness” seemingly wants to say something about MeToo culture. What it means to say, I have no idea, and which stance “House of Darkness” wishes to take in any such discussion is anyone’s guess. Taking the character at face value, Hap is separated from his wife and certainly hoping to score with an attractive woman. But that’s far from being a repugnant alpha male sleaze and he never presses Mina, or Lucy for that matter, to do anything nonconsensual, making him an unusual person to wish a terrible fate upon. Although he’s not worth rooting for, neither are the women, who are thinly characterized by having a one-note motivation that constitutes everything descriptive about their plain personalities.

Staged like a play from start to finish, “House of Darkness” is boringly blocked for the static staleness of constant chitchat. Perhaps the project was deemed too pedestrian to book even a desperate theater, and it was cheaper to produce as a flaccid feature film instead.

Dialogue-heavy scenes can still be exciting when they’re electrified by intensity, suggestive suspense, engaging mysteries, or energetic performances. Here, dialogue neglects to inject any kind of drama whatsoever, like it was written as a first draft with little purpose behind any of the lines and LaBute never bothered to replace the walla-walla with something substantial. Even an anecdote about a problematic painting offers mildly more entertainment than anything in “House of Darkness,” although it’s still just as pointless as this laughably weak exercise in supposedly provocative storytelling.

Review Score: 20

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