The House on Pine Street (2015)

What makes it different from others?

Well Deserved Praise

Very well executed

Very Cool!!!

I heard a lot of hype for The House on Pine Street for awhile when it was making it's rounds across the film festival circuit. Sitting down and watching the movie was unattainable unless I wanted to travel quite some distance to catch it at a festival. I was elated to see that it was finally available to view privately. And then I started to watch it....One of the first things I noticed immediately was the terrible acting. Every motion in this movie feels like just that, going through a motion. The three main characters you'll be dealing with (Jennifer, Luke, and Meredith) all lack fluidity on the screen overall. Worse yet, they fail to bring forth any stir of emotion in the more intimate scenes. A big supporter in the downfall stated above, is the atrocious script. The dialogue is dry and immensely boring (add onto this the white-washed filter they used to shoot the entire film, and it's basically a lullaby.) There is little to no character development even as you reach the end of the almost two-hour run time. And worse yet, the big reveal of the "evil" that haunts our protagonist at the end can be equated, basically, as "bad vibes dude". I REALLY love and respect a good horror film. It's a genre in film that calls for a lot of finesse. It takes phenomenal acting, a good plot, and creating an atmosphere to encompass all these elements together in a package containing ample amounts of dread. The House on Pine Street nailed absolutely none of these elements. It was an extreme disappointment. If you want to see a good horror film from 2015, check out "It Follows".

All over the Internet I've seen countless awards for this movie, a lot of positive reviews about it and this is completely baffling for me, going as far as to make me think that I've seen a different movie. I can't understand how is this production so praised, when almost every tense moment was nothing if not predictable, when the acting of most of the actors was not only visibly uninspired, but also irritating (I could barely stand the scenes where Jennifer's mother was featured). Besides this, I cannot cope with the fact that I have watched a ghost movie WITH NO ACTUAL GHOST featured in it. Also, the ending, with the "energy" explanation is so far-fetched and rushed, I felt it ruined the already bad impression I've had. The death of her husband was completely unnecessary, it felt misplaced, not to mention the almost full recovery of Jennifer from it in a matter of days. The plot in its entirety was a generic haunted house story, with no original aspects save for the actors, basically I felt as if I was watching another episode of "A Haunting", although I am inclined to appreciate the show a lot more for ACTUALLY FEATURING GHOSTS in it. I tend to believe the movie was biased for being successfully funded through Kickstarter. Other than that, there is a single way to describe this production : Unconvincing and generic.

The House on Pine Street is a genuinely creepy film that hearkens back to a more suspenseful tradition. There's no gore and very few jump scares, but it definitely made me intensely uneasy. It's a slow (in a good way) portrait of a woman whose state of mind is cast in doubt from beginning to end. Jenny (compellingly played by Emily Goss) is demonstrably not happy about being back in her Kansas hometown, living near her mother, away from her life in Chicago, and, most importantly, being pregnant. The film keeps you wondering arguably to the end about whether what's happening to Jenny is supernatural or psychological. A previous reviewer is definitely on point about the similarity of The House on Pine Street to Robert Wise's 1963 film The Haunting (and the Shirley Jackson novel on which the film was based). It also reminded me of Rosemary's Baby.

This was recommended to me because I liked The Conjuring, but I think The House on Pine Street hearkens back to an even earlier more stylish film -- Robert Wise's The Haunting. Like that film, The House on Pine Street uses mostly sound effects and lighting for its scares, though mixed in with modern shooting techniques to make it feel fresh. The film creates honest scares while also portraying a young wife's ambivalence toward motherhood and returning to her hometown. Fun and more effective for what it doesn't actually show or tell us is going on, it waits awhile before getting into the paranormal. It's patient, intelligent, and well-acted.