THE OPEN HOUSE (2018)

Studio:       Netflix
Director:    Matt Angel, Suzanne Coote
Writer:       Matt Angel, Suzanne Coote
Producer:  Matt Angel, Suzanne Coote, Dan Angel
Stars:     Dylan Minnette, Piercey Dalton, Patricia Bethune, Sharif Atkins, Aaron Abrams, Edward Olson, Katie Walder, Paul Rae, Leigh Parker, Matt Angel, Kathryn Beckwith

Review Score:

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Summary:

A grieving mother and son move into a remote mountain home where they are seemingly stalked by a stranger in the shadows.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

While waiting outside a convenience store, teenager Logan Wallace witnesses his father Brian getting hit and killed by a speeding car.

With Logan’s mother Naomi struggling to make ends meet, Naomi’s sister Allison offers for Naomi and Logan to stay in her vacant mountain house while it is on the market. The only condition is that Naomi and Logan must be elsewhere during open houses.

On their drive up to the remote home, Naomi and Logan are frightened by the sudden appearance of a man in the road. While stopping for groceries, Naomi and Logan meet their odd new neighbor Martha, who mentions that her husband is also deceased.

Upon getting settled in the house, Logan explores a long tunnel in the cellar. At night, a car in the driveway shines bright headlights and honks its horn before driving away. Logan goes outside and encounters Martha. Martha asks who Logan is and what he is doing on her property before wandering away confused.

Naomi and Logan leave for the afternoon while realtor Joannie McAllister and her associate Ed host an open house. Naomi and Logan discuss their family’s debt problems over lunch. While shopping afterward, Naomi meets store clerk Chris. Logan takes a disliking to Chris when he seemingly flirts with Naomi.

Naomi and Logan return home. Ed startles them as he rushes out the door. Logan mentions how odd open houses are because they allow strangers inside that no one monitors.

Eerie occurrences begin plaguing Naomi and Logan. The phone rings, but no one speaks on the other end. Logan’s cellphone goes missing. Naomi finds the hot water shut off during a shower. Someone slams the basement door on Naomi.

Chris comes to the house claiming to be interested in purchasing the property. Naomi allows him to explore on his own.

Martha briefly stops by. Martha mentions that Naomi should meet her husband. Naomi remembers Martha saying that her husband died. Logan later has another odd encounter with Martha.

The hot water goes out again. A mysterious man is seen stalking around the house unnoticed.

Naomi finds a crumpled family photo in the trash. A plumber who comes to inspect the water heater confirms that Martha’s husband died, but adds that Martha suffers from Alzheimer’s. The plumber also returns Logan’s phone, which he found in the basement.

Naomi confronts Logan with the cellphone and crumpled photo, accusing him of messing with her for revenge. Logan denies any involvement. The two of them have a blowout argument over Brian’s death. Later that night, Logan has a nightmare involving his father.

During the next open house, Logan goes for a run while Naomi goes into town. Naomi bumps into Chris. Chris gives Naomi his phone number and tells her to call if they ever need anything.

Allison calls Naomi to warn that the realtor reported a break-in. Naomi and Logan rush home. They find the dinner table set and Christmas music playing before receiving another silent phone call. Naomi calls the police, but officers find no one in the house.

Logan decides to call Chris to spend the evening on the couch for peace of mind. Later that night, Logan goes outside to inspect a car in the driveway. He finds Chris dead in the front seat. An unseen man knocks Logan unconscious from behind.

The man climbs into bed with Naomi. Naomi finds alarming photos taken by a stalker before the man violently attacks her.

Naomi wakes restrained to a chair. The man tortures her. Naomi calls for Logan. Logan recovers and rescues his mother.

Logan explores the house looking for a working phone or signs of the intruder. Startled while searching the basement tunnel, Logan accidentally stabs his mother. Naomi warns Logan to run before dying.

The man chases Logan. The man manages to take out Logan’s contact lenses, rendering him unable to identify his attacker. Logan flees outside and collapses. Martha briefly wanders by.

Logan recovers in the morning. Logan runs to a nearby stream. The man catches up to Logan and murders him. The unidentified killer then drives off toward another open house.

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Review:

Naomi is fast running out of threads she can tie together to make ends meet.  Deep in debt and reeling from her husband Brian’s death, Naomi takes a favor from her sister with a mountain home on the market.  Naomi and her teenage son Logan can stay in the remote house to get back on their feet.  The only catch is Naomi and Logan must make themselves scarce whenever the real estate agent hosts an open house.

This seems a fair enough caveat until mother and son make their way up the mountain and meet the area’s kooky characters.  There’s Martha, the weirdly intrusive neighbor whose senior moments add to her strangeness.  There’s Chris, a curiously friendly store clerk with a flirty eye pointed in Naomi’s direction.  Then there’s the mysterious man who vanishes in the middle of the road, the first in a series of odd encounters setting Naomi and Logan on edge.

Logan idly muses how odd open houses are.  Flinging open the front door and allowing anyone to wander around unchecked.  What do they do?  What do they touch?  Do all of them actually leave?

That last question comes to mind more often as doors creak in the night, items inexplicably change positions, and silence responds on the other end of a ringing phone.  Something or someone seems to be stalking Naomi and Logan.  Could it be Brian’s ghost?  One of the loony locals?  Or someone posing as a prospective buyer who has already made the house his own?

Odds are you won’t care who or what is responsible by the time “The Open House” concludes.  I didn’t.  As the camera tilted up to potentially glimpse the creeping culprit’s identity near the end, I paused the movie in favor of putting my lunch in the oven.  I cared so little about the premise’s payoff that I couldn’t be bothered to watch the final five minutes first.

“The Open House” puts viewers in this disinterested state by being as Plain Jane as a purported “thriller” can get.  Logan’s cellphone suddenly goes missing.  A cereal bowl is mysteriously moved.  Then there are persistent problems with the house’s plumbing.  Only so much suspense can be sucked from a pilot light repeatedly going out on a hot water tank, and tame tension like that sure as Shinola can’t sustain a 90-minute movie.

Stakes stay so low, audio shoulders the lion’s share burden of adding energy to the screen, even when limp actions don’t match the score’s smolder.  It’s sadly comical how ominous music builds to an orgasmic crescendo when Naomi pulls a crumpled family photo from a wastebasket as though she is Rosemary peeking into the black bassinet for the first time.

“The Open House” isn’t without initial intrigue.  Family drama between Naomi and Logan pulls from Hallmark Channel boilerplates, but Dylan Minnette and Piercey Dalton, the latter of whom calls to mind Catherine Keener meeting a frazzled Lucy Lawless, have the chops to forge an endearing dynamic between two sympathetic people.  The script simply does them no favors by developing only minor material required to propel pedestrian plot points.

Logan runs track.  This serves to substantiate his stamina later down the line.  Naomi is a photographer.  This conveniently explains why she develops a roll of film showing pictures snapped by a stalker.  Nearly nothing happens to give a sense that this world or these people live and breathe outside the confines of these 1.5 hours.

Several scenes have confounding purposes or placement.  Naomi is twice shown showering nude, with one shot juxtaposing her against her son speaking from the other side of an open door.  So the left side of frame depicts Logan asking about his phone while the right side reveals his mother’s bare butt in a nonchalant manner.  It’s simply an odd compositional choice with an unintentionally uncomfortable undertone.

Pity points are awarded for prominently featuring the terrific band Shannon and the Clams on the soundtrack.  The problem is, I have no idea what repeating their song “Dreams in the Rat House” as a leitmotif means to suggest as a story point.  Neither do I understand the conspicuous close-ups on 2% milk jugs during two separate convenience store trips.  I don’t think the movie knows why it does much of anything either.

If Dylan Minnette’s star wasn’t rising so high, particularly after “Goosebumps” (review here) and “Don’t Breathe” (review here), I don’t believe this movie would have made it to a mainstream channel.  “The Open House” features the kind of flippantly flimsy story and uninspired execution normally reserved for disposable DTV indies bigger distributors don’t want.

Co-directors Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote co-wrote as well as co-produced their film and also appear in speaking roles.  This stinks of a vanity project with enough financing to back a name behind bare minimum ambition for pumping out a meagerly mediocre movie.  Submitted as evidence: a cast of supporting players so meaningless, many of them are named according to profession, e.g. Plumber, Waitress, Cop #1, and Cop #2.

I’m genuinely surprised this landed a Netflix deal, as it may be the dullest, most pointlessly unentertaining movie I’ve streamed on their service.  Something such as “Bright” (review here) may have issues too.  But at least a disappointment like that still has several stars and slick-looking production value.  “The Open House” has nearly nothing of note, leaving just a throwaway thriller not at all worthy of bearing the Netflix name.

Review Score:  35

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