THE HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET

Director: Mark Tonderai

Screenplay: David Loucka
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Max Thieriot, Elisabeth Shue
Fear reaches out for the girl next door

The House at the end of the Street (Or HATES as it is known) has not received much praise since its release. In fact, the universal consensus seems to be that the film is a flop. And to be honest, it’s a fair assessment.

British DJ turned Director Mark Tonderai wrote and directed the low budget thriller Hush in 2008.

It was an interesting little film. Although the budget was limited and the script was quite limited, it still understood the basic elements required for creating tension and intrigue. Unfortunately HATES cannot even claim this.



Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) and her mother (Elisabeth Shue) move to a new town and find themselves living next to a house where a girl murdered her parents a few years previously. The girl disappeared and is presumed dead.  Elissa soon falls for the surviving son (played by Max Thierot) but it quickly becomes apparent that not all is as it seems.



I’ll get right to the point with the main reason this film ultimately fails to deliver. It is obsessed with its plot twist.  Sure the twist works on some levels (although it kinda feels like the end of a Scooby Doo episode) but you just get the feeling that everyone involved was so focused on managing the twist properly that they forgot that it was a horror movie.



In fact for a good (or not so good) 50 minutes or so you could be watching a “spooky” episode of One Tree Hill or something. Not that I watch that of course…but it is so pre-occupied with teen angst and high school drama that it forfeits any real build-up of tension.



HATES undoing here is not realising that its twist does not allow ample opportunity to scare the audience beforehand. It may make you re-examine certain scenes in a new light – and admittedly it is quite effective at this – but the result is a story and a film that is light on scares and atmosphere.



Jennifer Lawrence and Max Thieriot perform admirably and the production values are decent here too. Although you have to wonder that if Jennifer Lawrence had not recently become a star, would this have got a theatrical release at all?



Tonderai clearly has some directorial ability but David Loucka’s (Dream House) script nullifies all of the positive aspects that HATES has to offer.
And once the twist is out of the way we are left with typical formulaic genre fare. Predictable and rather dreary.  If you are a teenager looking for some ultra-mild scares then this may work for you, but if you are a true horror fan then there’s a good chance you’re going to be very disappointed with it.



RB