Reviews
Review: ‘The Deep House’ An Aquatic Ghost Experience
The Deep House is a 2021 French supernatural horror film written and directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo. One night, I saw the aquatic cover deep within Hulu’s horror section and decided to give it a shot. The water always freaked me out because you don’t know what lies beneath. My brain always jumps to Lovecraftian monsters, so when I saw a haunted-looking house on the cover beneath two descending divers, I knew I had to take this plunge.
A Unique Premise: Influencers Dive into a Submerged Haunted House
To my pleasant surprise, conceptually, it was really cool. The plot centers around a social media influencer called Ben (James Jagger) and his girlfriend Tina (Camille Rowe) in their travels seeking fresh content to serve up to their loyal audience. The couple is traveling from New York to France specifically looking for a submerged asylum which upon their discovery turns out to be the site of a populated recreational area and thus is not very cool for the influencers. They cross paths with a grizzly-looking local man named Pierre (Eric Savin), who informs them of a completely intact, submerged house far away from those pesky, uncool families. Our beloved couple, hungry for views, cannot resist the allure of such a perfectly magnificent adventure, despite the many obvious red flags.
The Deep House has elements of a found-footage style film, except here the audience is given many extra angles thanks to an underwater drone that follows the main characters around on their damp adventures. Found footage films, to me, give off a very claustrophobic vibe, which holds true for the duration of this movie. This complements the idea that they’re underwater in cramped scuba suits with only a given amount of oxygen, all before actually encountering the ghouls. They build this atmosphere well throughout its entirety.
Atmospheric Thrills and Chilling Isolation
So as the movie progresses, it’s a scary and atmospheric romp around this house and everything is going well, and it’s pretty frightening. The ambiance is there, the feeling of isolation is there, the feeling of impending suffocation is there; they’re ticking most of my fright boxes. And then, just as my enjoyment of this movie begins to solidify, we’re presented with the ghouls. Without going into specifics, they floated around the screen like a chunk of lava in a lava lamp or like a candy bar in a swimming pool waiting to be fished out with one of those blue nets on a stick. They did not scare me in the slightest, which is my only real gripe with this movie.
So, the last third of the movie involves a lot of ghoul cat and mouse games, which were hard for me to swallow because I couldn’t get over how nonthreatening they were. I shouldn’t feel like I’d easily be able to overcome some supernatural-type entity. That idea distracted me for the remaining portion of the film, and honestly the interesting concepts driving the plot forward became lame to me, because these ghouls seemed like such weaklings. However, the film’s ending redeemed itself for its transgressions against universally accepted horror movie ghoul guidelines and standards.
Fresh Take on Supernatural Horror with Social Commentary
The Deep House does do a lot right though, and it is an entertaining movie. The underwater sets and acting brought a fresh feel to the supernatural horror genre. The social commentary they deliver regarding content creators is always a relatable topic. They did a good job showing how eager content creators can become so fixated on their work that they fail to realize what may be going on around them, leading to otherwise avoidable trouble.
Ultimately, after all is said and done, and the credits begin to roll, I’m left with an inclination not to dive into a foreign lake containing a perfectly intact submerged old house. However, if I were to do the opposite and indeed dive into said ghost house lake, I would probably not fret and gently push the ghouls aside with ease and continue on with my scuba business.
You can watch The Deep House on Paramount+
There are countless subgenres within subgenres for horror, and one that feels underutilized is workplace horror. Unless you’re one of the lucky few, most people wake up at some point during the day, go to work, and then come home. It’s one of the few things in life that’s nearly unavoidable. While there are countless real-life examples of workplace violence, seeing exaggerated forms of it in film can still be fun. When I pitched covering The Belko Experiment for this month, I actually thought I was pitching Joe Lynch’s Mayhem. I soon found out how incorrect I had been, but figured I’d go along with it anyway.
Mike Milch (John Gallagher Jr.) and 79 of his coworkers are locked inside the towering building they come to work in every day in Bogotá, Colombia. They’re given simple instructions: murder two coworkers within the next half hour. When they fail that task, coworkers’ heads start blowing up left and right. When they’re given the next task, kill 30 people in two hours, they take it…a little more seriously.
The Belko Experiment’s Brutal Premise Sets Up High Stakes
Written by James Gunn and directed by Wolf Creek creator Greg McLean, The Belko Experiment is a painfully by-the-numbers film that offers little more than a handful of entertaining kills. Its futile attempts at commentary regarding work/life balance or just how bad “faceless” upper management is fall so flat it’s comical. Nothing like multi-millionaire James Gunn telling me how awful it is to have to work a real job for a living. Great work. And its one-dimensional characters do little more than create a slight sigh of relief when they’re dispatched without regard.
A singular attempt at cleverness is broached from the beginning when we see a colony of ants in an ant farm on someone’s desk. Oh, look at that, these workers are nothing more than mindless ants! But any attempt at following that slightly clever idea is quickly thrown away. At one point, Barry Norris (Tony Goldwyn), the big boss in the office, attempts to group up who should and shouldn’t be killed; who has the most value outside of work. Gunn had the perfect opportunity to make Barry a deep and more sinister antagonist. If Barry had grouped people into sets from most to least profitable for the company, we would have something. It would show that Barry is a forward-thinking villain who is trying to suck up to the people who get paid even MORE than him!
Missed Opportunities for a Smarter Corporate Villain
I’ll do you one better. After all of that, what if the bad guys that Barry recruited to help him cull his subordinates realized they were just pawns in the game of Big Business? So then they attempt to repent by killing Barry in the hopes that they can find a common means of escape from this hell? Why is there zero attempt at making an interesting story other than this shitty, watered-down Battle Royale with people we don’t give a shit about? Instead of anything interesting, we’re just given a group of baddies who try to get into the security office’s gun safe. The only reason we’re slightly scared of the “bad guys” is because they’re bad guys.
The only slightly interesting performances we get are from David Dastmalchian and Adria Arjona, even if it might be a fluke. As someone who is a fan of Greg McLean and the Wolf Creek series, something just felt disconnected about nearly every aspect of The Belko Experiment. I’ve brought it up before that sometimes it’s okay to have a film that doesn’t tell a great story as long as the kills can carry some of the weight. But to say this film has a story is laughable, and that carries over to how flat this film looks.
Skip The Belko Experiment and Watch Mayhem Instead
It’s weird how sour this film left me. When I was watching it, I found myself grimacing at some of the kills. And I didn’t vehemently dislike it as much as this review would suggest. But as I sat there and thought longer, I just couldn’t wrap my head around what anyone sees in this. Mayhem is an all-around better film that tackles this same subject but in a much better way. So if you ever decide to sit down and watch The Belko Experiment, maybe go watch Mayhem on Shudder instead.
Would it be a month of coverage on Horror Press if I didn’t bring up at least one aughts film? I know the curator of all things Horror Press, James-Michael, is shaking his fists at the sky and cursing the fact that he approved me covering The Hitcher. Of all the remakes that were so pervasive throughout the aughts, The Hitcher is one that slipped completely under my radar. And that’s a damn shame. It wouldn’t be until I found a DVD copy at Bookoff that I finally got the opportunity to watch it. Hot damn, the critics really got it wrong here.
The Hitcher: A Road Trip Turned Nightmare
Jim Halsey (Zachary Knighton) and his girlfriend Grace Andrews (Sophia Bush) are on a road trip to Lake Havasu in Jim’s gorgeous Oldsmobile 442. An unfortunate run-in with a mysterious hitchhiker, John Ryder (Sean Bean), Jim and Grace find themselves in a fight for life and death. Only, John isn’t their only concern. With the 5-0 hot on their tails, Jim and Grace must escape from a psychopathic man with a death wish and the hot-tempered, hot-faced Lieutenant Esteridge (Neal McDonough). As the odometer grows, so does the body count.
The Hitcher is one of those remakes that does not have the approval of the original’s lead, Rutger Hauer. Which is astounding to me. Sure, the original is good. But it doesn’t set itself apart from the crowd too much. Rutger Hauer’s John is slightly more reserved, and while he has an edge to him, I don’t necessarily find him overly menacing. (Don’t kill me.) Sean Bean’s John Ryder, on the other hand, is furiously terrifying. There’s no question that there are tons of issues with the Platinum Dunes remake, though, for me, the pros significantly outweigh the cons.
Jim Halsey Falls Flat
The biggest issue is the character of Jim Halsey. I love how the roles of Jim and Grace are swapped from the original film. It brings an updated, modern edge to the film and is a great way to throw audiences who have seen the original. Though I can imagine the hyper-masculine fans of the original were not too happy with that. When it was decided to swap the roles of the characters, it seems like any character depth for Jim was thrown out of the window. I think Zachary Knighton is a wonderful actor who does the best with what he has, but he doesn’t have enough to work with. Writers Eric Red, Jake Wade Wall, and Eric Bernt updated the film with tons of epic scenarios and moments, while seemingly forgetting to make the supposed lead of the film interesting.
On top of cardboard Jim, the inciting police incident just feels very forced. Grace runs into a diner, covered in blood, after she and Jim found a family butchered by John. Someone from the diner calls the police, which leads to Jim and Grace being arrested and charged with murder. Whether or not that’s supposed to be commentary on rural police doesn’t matter because it completely fails to do anything other than forcibly push the story forward.
Besides that? I hate to say, but I don’t have many issues with The Hitcher.
Soundtrack and Atmosphere: A High-Octane Experience
First and foremost, The Hitcher’s soundtrack is incredible. We start the film with Move Along by The All-American Rejects. Talk about a shot of adrenaline. And the greatest needle drop in all of aughts horror history is Nine Inch Nails’s Closer during the film’s most wild car chase. It’s hard not to get lost in this film when the music kicks in.
What really sells this film is how intensely they handle the violence and the film’s gorgeous chase scenes. It’s no Death Proof, but these scenes are miles above the Fast movies that were out at this time. In a day and age where chase scenes are overly produced, badly edited, and just plain boring, The Hitcher manages to infuse horror and action in a way that probably won’t be seen again. Watching films like The Hitcher makes me sad for the state of modern cinema. The Hitcher wasn’t made to win scores of Oscars; it was made by people passionate about telling a badass, harrowing story (minus Jim). And they greatly excel at that.
The Hitcher Is a Misunderstood Cult Favorite
The Hitcher falls in line with my running theory of post-9/11 ultra violence. We were a nation scared of what happened, what was happening, and what seemed to be on the horizon–The Hitcher bottles that fear and anger, packaging it into a nasty piece of genre. Sean Bean and Sophia Bush are an on-screen match made in heaven. They wade through harsh lighting, thick film grain, and buckets of blood to deliver a film that critics and audiences unfairly panned. While audiences may have moved along, I sure didn’t. I want to exist in a world of nothing but aughts genre films, but am forced to live in a world of elevated horror. Le sigh.
