House on Willow Street Movie Review
Hazel (Sharni Vinson, You're Next) leads a group of criminals as they break into a house and kidnap the daughter of a rich dude. Unfortunately for the kidnappers, the daughter, Katherine (Carlyn Burchell), is hiding a secret that will result in the tables being turned on the bad guys. South Africa offers up this 2016 horror flick that was originally titled From the House on Willow Street--I kind of like that better, but let's move it along. I'm not giving away too much to say that there's something very evil about Katherine, and the casting of Burchell for this role was perfect--she has a natural look that lends itself well to this character, and what she becomes later.
Does she look like somebody you want to kidnap?
This movie actually gets off to a great start--once Katherine is chained up, we begin seeing the human side of her kidnappers, and the not so human side of her. This leads to a fairly engaging story that plays out well--at least at first. The special effects are decent for the budget, but that all falls apart during the fiery climax. Once Burchell is in full makeup, she looks wonderfully wicked, though scaling it back just a bit would have probably resulted in a scarier character. She does great with her own voice, but this gives way to the less interesting demon voice we get in almost every possession type film. The acting struggles a bit--Burchell and Vinson turn in good performances, but the rest of the cast is much weaker. We see several ghosts throughout, and the work here is impressive--a comparison to Thir13en Ghosts would be fair. The fault of the movie is in its jump scares reliance--they are far too frequent, to the point you see them coming a mile away. The ending is a bit disappointing, both in story and visuals. House on Willow Street is not a great horror film, and is one you will likely forget, or maybe confuse with dozens of similar films, but there is enough going on to keep your attention the entire way.
On A Scale Of One To Ten: 6
House on Willow Street Movie Review
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