THE HOUSE (HUSET) (2016 - German/Norwegian)

Studio:       Artsploitation Films
Director:    Reinert Kiil
Writer:       Reinert Kiil
Producer:  Reinert Kiil, Kjetil Jensberg, Svein Andersen, Terje Stromstad
Stars:     Frederik von Luttichau, Mats Reinhardt, Sondre Krogtoft Larsen, Espen Edvardsen, Sigmund Saeverud, Anita Ihler, Ingvild Flikkerud

Review Score:

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Summary:

Two Nazi soldiers stranded in the snow with a Norwegian POW seek shelter inside a mysterious house haunted by a cursed past.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Stranded in snowy Norwegian countryside, Nazi officer Jurgen Kreiner and German soldier Andreas Fleiss take shelter in an isolated house with their Norwegian prisoner Rune Henriksbo. The house appears recently lived in, with hot food on the stove and a radio playing, but no one is inside. White crosses adorn the walls and strange runes are found drawn on a closet door.

While Rune lies prone from his gangrenous wound, Fleiss replaces the Norwegian flag flying outside with a Nazi one and briefly sees a woman in the house’s window. Kreiner finds children’s drawings and what appears to be a handwritten guest book whose cover bears the same symbols as the closet door upstairs.

That night, Kreiner and Fleiss are woken by screams to find Rune inexplicably moved to a bed upstairs. Fleiss explores more of the house and encounters a vision of Susanne, his lover from back home.

Other instances of paranormal activity continue throughout the house. Occasional flashbacks depict the exorcism of a girl named Lise.

Rune examines the handwritten book. Fleiss recognizes that the symbols on the cover match the ones on the closet door. Fleiss and Kreiner open the door, but find nothing inside.

Looking closer at the book, Kreiner observes that it is written in multiple languages and warns of something evil in the upstairs closet. Uncomfortable in the house, Kreiner insists that they leave. Because his leg injury slows them down, Kreiner and Fleiss leave Rune behind.

Kreiner tells Fleiss that inside the house, he saw a little girl named Ingrid whom he killed with gas at a concentration camp. Fleiss tells Kreiner that he allowed Rune to live because he tried saving fellow soldier Max, even though Max died.

A woman attacks Rune in the house. Kreiner and Fleiss hear a gunshot from that direction. Kreiner and Fleiss then discover that the path they had been following inexplicably led them back to the house. They find Rune in the snow and take him inside where they see the house is back to the exact same state it was in when they first arrived.

Kreiner slaps Fleiss when he openly suggests they are dead and in Hell. Rune becomes possessed. Kreiner tells Fleiss that the house seemingly will not let them leave and the only way to escape might be to figure out the house’s complete story.

The book suddenly moves on its own. Black lines like veins creep across the closet door. Kreiner experiences another vision of Ingrid.

Kreiner insists that they must investigate the closet upstairs. Fleiss counters by saying that is what the house wants them to do. Fleiss instead shoots and kills Rune before fleeing outside into the forest.

Fleiss follows a vision of his fallen comrade Max to a noose where a woman weeps blood at the feet of a possessed girl swinging from the rope. Fleiss runs back to the house where the cycle starts once more.

This time, Kreiner has no recollection of the time loop, acting as though he has just entered the house for the first time. Rune is alive again. Fleiss brings up Ingrid as well as Kreiner’s wife Victoria in an effort to prove that Kreiner revealed these things to him on a previous timeline. Kreiner initially does not believe Fleiss’ claims.

Kreiner and Fleiss open the closet door and find the little girl inside. Something grabs Kreiner and pulls him in. The door slams shut. Kreiner reappears running up the stairs and back into the bedroom. Startled, Fleiss shoots at him, but misses.

When the men realize Rune is no longer on the bed, Kreiner goes downstairs to search for him. Fleiss writes about their experiences in the house inside the journal.

After finding a photo of Rune with the woman and child from the exorcism visions, Kreiner and Fleiss realize they have been in Rune’s house the entire time and that the house intends for them to suffer the same way that Rune’s family did. Kreiner concludes that the cycle of torment will never end. As Rune appears behind Fleiss in a possessed state, Kreiner and Fleiss pull their guns and shoot each other.

With both men dead, Rune resets the house to its original state. Kreiner and Fleiss approach the house outside.

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Review:

Among phrases I attempt to avoid if at all possible are “slow burn” and “arthouse.”  I’m rarely successful.  They are overused terms, yet oh-so-attractive when it comes to succinctly describing/warning that a movie’s mood takes precedence over visual energy and its style is in step with your local limited release theater as opposed to whatever is now playing at the neighborhood multiplex.

Impatient audiences read “slow burn” and hear “boring” while a more snobbish set might see “arthouse” and think “pretentious.”  Creative wordsmithing can find ways to break through these conceptions by taking a different route to descriptions.  However, since “The House” (“Huset” in its native Norwegian) director Reinert Kiil used these exact terms when introducing his film at Screamfest, he has relieved me of the burden to come up with something cleverer.  In this case, I can simply say, “The House” is a slow-burn supernatural haunter with an arthouse aesthetic whose emphasis is on aura instead of action.

Nazi officer Kreiner and German soldier Fleiss are lost and stranded in a snowy Norwegian forest.  Fleiss contemplates killing Rune, the injured POW slowing them down, but Kreiner cautions the young hothead to cool it with cold-blooded murder for the moment.  They have a more urgent matter of finding shelter if they are to survive this harsh winter weather.

Kreiner and Fleiss find sanctuary in the form of a remote house standing strangely by itself among the trees.  While their Norwegian prisoner hobbles alongside them, the two Germans search the welcoming residence to find hot food on the stove, a flag waving in the front yard, and a radio blaring the news, but no one home.  Despite appearances, there doesn’t seem to be a soul in sight, except for the ghosts of something sinister that happened here who are about to haunt each man’s mind.

As time spent in the house advances, Kreiner and Fleiss sense something supernatural is behind the white crosses adorning the walls and symbols scrawled on a closet door upstairs.  When the men begin encountering visions of people from their pasts who could not possibly be there, they begin questioning if they have somehow stepped into a sort of psychological Hell from which there may be no escape.

“The House” has more than its fair share of moody moments, but so little of actual story substance occurs that it is difficult to have an emotional response to any of the eeriness onscreen.  Rarely is the film intrusively unsettling in a psychological sense because it takes too long to be clued into what is happening to these men and why.  Playing cards close to the chest to heighten mystery is one thing.  Not giving the audience a breadcrumb incentive to hook into the fiction from the outset is another.

The movie’s uphill battle starts with its chief protagonists.  Kreiner and Fleiss have a loose good cop/bad cop dynamic going on, at least when it comes to dealing with POW Rune, where Kreiner has the more favorable personality of the two.  Yet being that both men are Nazis, their characters inherently read as bad cop/worse cop, as there is little use asking an audience to sympathize with German WWII soldiers simply on principle.

In a script with wider storytelling eyes opened, the Norwegian prisoner would be the sensible audience surrogate.  Except Rune blends so far into the background that you are more than once liable to forget he is even in the house as an active part of the plot with the other two men.

Shot in 12 days for just €90,000, and basically featuring only three primary actors in a single location, “The House” is an excellent exercise in atmosphere above anything else.  Reinert Kiil crafts a compelling, simple concept from a chilly, wintry setting with intriguing period tones.  Connecting with its creepiness just requires a deep appreciation of tiptoeing down haunted hallways, constant creaking, the persistent metronome of a pendulum clock, etc.

“The House” has it where it counts for atmospheric fear factor.  Its fiction however, is too abstractly obtuse to give the additional lift needed to be something more than “okay” for a slow-burn arthouse thriller.

NOTE: The film’s Norwegian title is “Huset.”  The film's UK title is "The Winter Siege."

Review Score:  60

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