Ti West’s 2009 horror film The House of the Devil is more than just a simple crackerjack Satanic-panic thriller about a scared housesitter – it is a deliberate throwback to the occult horror films of the 1970s and 1980s, where the media was beset by stories of Satanists terrorizing communities and performing untold acts in the name of dark forces. At its core, House of the Devil is a tremendous debut, a horror film that wears its influences on its sleeve while honoring what was so fascinating about the subgenre’s subject matter. Through stellar cinematography that honors the type of film it is homaging while being effective in its own right, West’s House of the Devil remains an entertaining and nail-biting reference point to one of the most interesting times in horror film history.
Following the story of Samantha Hughes (Jocelin Donahue), a young college student who takes a babysitting job at a remote house because she is short on cash, House of the Devil spends most of its runtime in the titular house, as Samantha spends the night there while the eerie Mr. and Mrs. Ullman (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov) go out for the night. While there, however, strange things begin to happen, as Samantha discovers more about the Ullmans through the records and photos found in the house, and stranger things start to happen as the girl spends her night alone in the house. Eventually, she becomes embroiled in a Satanic cult who has lured her to the house to become the instrument of a horrific ritual, with the rest of the film revolving around whether or not she will escape her fate.
At its core, House of the Devil lives and dies on its aesthetic and adherence to its tropes about 70s and 80s horror films. West’s filmmaking in House of the Devil is heavily derived from the 16mm film look of horror films, including the slightly soft focus, use of zooms, freeze frames, and other accoutrements. Even the title card is evocative of this era, including the copyright crawl at the bottom which was the norm for many films of this genre during the 70s.
The costumes and set design are also in keeping with the era, with Samantha and Megan dressed in the kinds of low-key but brightly-colored clothing 70s youths would wear during that time. The cars are also era-appropriate, with Megan’s Lincoln Continental offering that classic car look that was common during horror’s heyday. Samantha’s Walkman also plays heavily in the events of the film, providing yet another prop to fill out the movie’s 70s-centric look. At the same time, however, the film does not completely lend itself to being set in the 1970s outright, opting instead for these visual suggestions that tie the audience’s appreciation for those horror films to House of the Devil. Instead, the film occupies a precarious middle ground between the two eras, which has the effect of making the film seem timeless.
The central character of Samantha is also crucial to this understanding of 70s horror films, as she embodies many of the character tropes typical of the genre in a knowing way. In keeping with the 70s aesthetic, and the dedication of West to make this film an homage to horror films of that era, Samantha herself looks much like Margot Kidder’s protagonist from Black Christmas and Jessica Harper from Suspiria, with her long black, parted hair and slinky tops. According to Clover’s Men, Women and Chainsaws, Samantha would very well fit the mold of the “final girl” – the virtuous young woman at the center of a horror film who makes it to the end and saves the day from the serial slasher.
Final Girls undergo “agonizing trials” and “virtually or actually [destroy] the antagonist and saves herself,” making her a much more proactive character than the typical damsel in distress that is found in many horror films, or films in general. Samantha, in this case, is not just the Final Girl, but the Only Girl in most respects – except for her friend Megan (played by Greta Gerwig), she is the only protagonist in any remote danger for the vast majority of the film.
The real subversion of the Final Girl trope, and the structure of horror films themselves, comes with the relative lack of action in much of the movie. While many horror films provide a few thrills to keep the audience interested, West chooses instead to ratchet up the tension of the most mundane elements of the story as much as possible, leaving the audience to wonder at what point the occult terrors will really begin. West does not rely on jump scares as such, but simply subverts expectations by having events occur in an unconventional and surprising way. When Megan off-handedly mentions to the stranger (AJ Bowen) that she is not the babysitter, the stranger pulls out a gun and shoots her in the head, killing her. The blasé way the stranger does this, and the abrupt escalation of this moment, is a shock to the audience, West crafting a horrific moment in the middle of the audience’s greatest sense of relief.
At the house, West’s dedication to this slower pace leaves the film at a tremendously slow burn for the majority of the runtime of House of the Devil. As the audience, we inherently know something is wrong with the house and the Ullmans, and that something terrible will happen to Samantha. West knows this as well, and so he keeps the audience waiting through deliberately elongated scenes of Samantha walking around the house, looking through cabinets and cupboards, building suspense and keeping the tension ratcheted up.
While we see several terrible things happening around Samantha (e.g. the aforementioned murder of Megan by the stranger, who is the Ullmans’ son), Samantha herself remains eerily safe in the house, despite our knowledge that there is a sick old woman somewhere in the house we are not allowed to see. Through this structure, West allows the audience to know much more than the protagonist does, which makes her plight all the more terrifying.
The climax of the film pays off all of this tension, which has been built up over the last hour, by crafting a truly terrifying and surreal sequence. Extremely reminiscent of famous horror works like Rosemary’s Baby, West drops Samantha an in occult nightmare, where she is dressed in a white nightie and chained to a wooden floor over a painted pentagram. The reveal of this is where West gets to use more modern film techniques, such as the staggered, shuttered frames from black that eventually reveal Samantha’s predicament.
However, the filmic basis is still in that terrifying, 16mm grainy close-up of the final girl trapped in a Satanic situation that borrows plot elements (and even camera angles) from the nightmare sequence in Rosemary’s Baby. West’s choice to abruptly go from 0 to 100 in terms of tension (essentially cutting from a scene of a girl eating pizza to a terrifying Satanist nightmare) is a hallmark of the film, and is the work’s biggest centerpiece. Up to that point, the film itself maintains a fairly low-key sense of anticipatory tension, making the decision to smash-cut to such a horrifying scene particularly effective.
Another way in which West respects and upholds the tropes of 70s and 80s horror filmmaking is in its surprisingly nihilistic ending, which nonetheless does not take away from Samantha’s agency. Much like in Rosemary’s Baby, the film ends with the main character becoming the mother of a demonic creature; however, unlike Rosemary, who is sufficiently traumatized into accepting the child as hers to care for, Samantha makes the decision to end her life as soon as she understands what she is carrying inside her.
Looking at Samantha’s journey from the lens of gender, particularly as it applies to horror films, The House of the Devil still provides a great deal of exploration of the fundamental woman-centric fears that lie under many of these horror films. As in many other horror films, the Other is the central source of terror – here, that is personified in many different ways. The uncanny behavior of the Ullmans, the destructive violence performed by the outwardly-normal son, and even the more overtly supernatural figures like the Mother and the unseen baby, are all examples of a destructive outside force coming to break down the otherwise-pleasant world of 1970s America in which Samantha lives.
While Clover argues that Final Girls are often “figurative males,” effectively men placed in women’s bodies to allow male audiences to explore their feminine side, Samantha’s central conflict becomes chiefly about motherhood and the fear that comes with an unplanned pregnancy (as well as the rape-coded nature of that final ritual scene). In this way, Samantha’s Final Girl nature is explicitly feminine, exploring femaleness in a way many films of the era that spawned it do not.
Ti West’s House of the Devil provides a uniquely effective blend of 70s horror homage with a self-aware subversion of some of the genre’s tropes, while still maintaining the central spine of what made this particular genre so successful during its time. The use of 16mm cinematography, era-appropriate clothes and atmosphere, and a Final Girl who befits the archetype while making slightly more progressive choices, make House of the Devil an incredibly effective example of a horror homage that functions perfectly well as a horror film on its own. While fitting squarely into the “Satanic Panic” genre of the 1970s, The House of the Devil provides effective thrills and an incredible sense of tension that easily helps it hold up among many of the genre’s best examples.
Works Cited
Carol J. Clover, Men, Women, and Chainsaws (Princeton University Press, 1992).
The House of the Devil [film]. MPI Media Group (2009).
