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Movie Review: The House with 100 Eyes

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I’m getting a little tired of the found footage and mockumentary style horror movies, but every so often one comes along, such as The Sacrament, that is so good that it serves as a reminder that this sub-genre may still have something fresh to offer. Unfortunately, The House with 100 Eyes does not do that. Instead, it feels like a mishmash of ideas we’ve seen before with the effectiveness level of said ideas turned down.

The plot is simple. A psychotic married couple are documenting the creation of a snuff film in which they have two teenage girls and a boy over to their home to have sex with each other and be murdered on film. We’re supposed to see the creation of a snuff film. Unfortunately there’s never a second that we forget we’re watching a fictional movie. It never feels real, which would be a key component to making this device work, so instead it falls flat.

It’s being sold as part comedy, but I didn’t find many reasons to laugh despite a few noticeable attempts to elicit such a reaction. It’s mostly played pretty straight.

On the DVD packaging, we’re told that The House of 100 Eyes is like American Psycho meets This is Spinal Tap. It’s supposed to be both horrific and humorous. I can’t honestly say that I found it to be either. The best way I can describe it is more like Man Bites Dog or The Last Horror Movie meets Suburban Nightmare with maybe a little bit of Lucky Bastard thrown in. It’s just not as good as any of these films (and only one of them is really all that highly regarded in the first place).

The gore effects are reasonably decent, but sometimes as they’re occurring there is annoying camera nonsense that makes them hard to see, which I guess is supposed to make it seem more real, but instead it just makes it seem like something didn’t look as good as they had hoped so they did that to hide it. I don’t know if that’s actually the case, but that’s the feeling I got.  In fact, there is some pretty annoying camera shaking and noise throughout a good deal of the picture and it contributes to some horrendous editing.

Going into the movie, you might get the impression that you’re going to be in for some extreme shit, but if that’s what it’s going for, it misses the mark there too – you’re probably better off with something like one of the Guinea Pig or August Underground films. If you like the concept of the murdering couple with humorous elements, I’d suggest Sightseers. If you want to see people strapped in chairs and tortured, watch one of the Hostels. They have much more substance.

I realize everything I’ve said up until now would lead you to believe The House of 100 Eyes is one of the worst movies I’ve seen. It’s not. It’s easier to get through than a lot of films I’ve watched over the years, and the 76-minute running time helps in that department. I just feel like I’ve seen pretty much seen everything it has to offer before and done more effectively. If you haven’t seen any of the other movies I’ve mentioned in this review, you might get more out of it than I did.

Official Synopsis:

AMERICAN PSYCHO meets THIS IS SPINAL TAP in this gory mockumentary.  A nice middle-class American couple spend their spare time making and selling snuff videos.  When they plot their latest – featuring three kills in one night – everything goes terribly, bloodily wrong. THE HOUSE WITH 100 EYES is simultaneously shocking and satirical.

The film is written and co-directed by Jim Roof and co-directed by Jay Lee (Zombie Strippers!, Alyce Kills).

The House with 100 Eyes comes to DVD on June 16 from Artsploitation. Before that, on June 9, they’re releasing the far more entertaining Der Samurai (review). On June 23 they’ll release Horsehead, which is next on my reviewing agenda.

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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