First House on the Hill (2017)

Boring, long, and too preachy.

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

I selected this movie for my filmfestival in Hannover and it even became 2nd in the audience vote. It is a nice little hommage to the Giallos with strong vivid colours, good camera work and athmosphere. Of course it is not like todays terror movies. If you are in the mood for something that looks like it was shot decades ago, I can recommend it.

I found two similar "isolation" type movies and decided to watch both before reviewing. I watched this first, and "Edge of Isolation" the following night, because "Edge" had the lower rating. This is the second time I've done comparisons on two similar movies, and both times the second, lower rates movie was better. When I decide to recommend a movie it isn't "would I watch it again" (that's almost always a no), it's more "after seeing it, would I go back and watch it in the first place?". While I would definitely watch "Edge", I would save the 90 minutes I wasted watching "First House". It had my attention in the beginning, it had potential. I watched in interest at first, seeing how it would develop, but then it took a turn for the worse. Where the movie had a chance to get interesting, it just went bat $hit crazy, like the writer dropped some acid at the beginning of the movie and then it hit him an hour in. I'll save you the trouble and just tell you to go watch "Edge of Isolation" instead.

I can't believe I watched it all. I have this pathetic compulsion to see things thru regardless of how much agony it causes. This was all over the place. There was no cohesiveness. I think I got a migraine trying to follow it. The actors were so unnatural that it hurt. Lord I regret watching this. Please believe me, you do not want to watch this.

This film has no idea what it wants to be. It wants to be an old school giallo, no wait, a comedy. Nevermind, meta horror. Nope, maybe a mix of all the above. And a poorly written, acted, directed and scored one at that. It could have been a "so bad it's good" cult film, but it fails at that too. It's just plain bad.