I decided to watch Girl House because it was made by Jon Knautz director of The Cleaning Lady, a film I watched last night and really enjoyed.
The premise is quite unique, we follow Ali Cobrin's character Kyle Atkins, a cam girl who decides to go to live and work at a house where all the occupants stream sexual content online. While there she attracts the attention of one extremely creepy fan who goes by the online alias Lover-boy. The fan then descends upon the house with the aim of killing all the occupants inside, it's essentially a new spin on slashers killing sorority girls, but is it any good?
John Knautz definitely has a distinct style as a filmmaker, his slasher films are slow burns with big explosive pay offs, in both The Cleaning Lady and Girl House we spend a lot of time with our protagonists before all hell breaks loose. Both films also feature a little bit of backstory on their respective killers but its here sadly that Girl House falters a little in the exact places where The Cleaning Lady really succeeds as movie.
The backstory we are given for the killer is brief and although a very good opening to the movie doesn't really add anything to the overall plot, all it tells me is that he's a pervert who can't talk to women and has been his whole life, I get it, great, what else?, oh that's it...ok then.
A slasher movie after all is only as good as its villain and the one in Girl House is frankly quite dull. I get that this may be an intentional choice on the part of the filmmaker, after all we are basically dealing with a freakishly strong Incel but there's just nothing to him, he isn't frightening, he isn't menacing, he is just bland and to top it off the costume he wears (a blow up dolls face as a mask with long black hair) is a bit of a bad Texas chainsaw massacre ripoff.
Here's the thing about this movie, it's not awful at all, it's ok but I can't see myself watching it again. It has a few things I did really enjoy about it, Ali Corbin is a good actress and final girl and you do find yourself caring about what happens to her, she's no Sydney Prescot but she's good.
I think the setting is interesting for this type of story and as with The Cleaning Lady the violence in this film is graphic, sudden and gory and there are a few good sequences in it, one in particular was an obvious nod to the night vision scene in Silence Of The Lambs.
But overall the film itself felt a bit too generic to really leave a lasting impression on me which is a shame, I don't think if you come across this by chance that you'll feel cheated out of your time or anything but I can't in all good conscience add it to my monthly recommendations as there are better slasher films out there which I want you to see and this is just not the directors best work that I've seen so far.
Add comment
Comments