I didn’t expect 2023 to be the year of Justin Long for me. The guy who was most notably the Mac in the Mac vs PC commercials from the early 2000s, and who was featured in various comedic films like Galaxy Quest and Waiting, Long made a shift in his career as an actor at some point. He used to be the nerdy guy who was a little goofy, but somewhat charming. Then, he started playing roles that required him to be a self-centered dick. Tusk and Barbarian are two examples that are fresh in my mind having watched them relatively close together. Now, we have another example of him playing a similar character in House of Darkness. Though, I would argue that this is perhaps an instance in which his role is not properly characterized to be deserving of the fate that he inevitably gets like his other movies I just mentioned.

Pros

Awkward, stilted dialogue with uncomfortable pauses that would normally be terrible creates a lot of tension in each scene
Acting is decent from the small cast

Cons

If you are not in the right mindset while watching, you will be bored before you even get to the worst part of the film
Hap’s behavior suddenly shifts at the end in a way that is not consistent with the character and is clearly meant to lean into a particular message
The dialogue that was good up until the end is undone by a social message the film has in mind (hint, it’s men=bad)

Plot & Thoughts

When I started watching House of Darkness, I knew nothing about it and didn’t even have the luxury of a thumbnail on IMDB to clue me in that it was going to involve vampires. That didn’t matter, however, because it introduced a couple of ladies named Mina and Lucy relatively early into the film: a very clear reference to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. So, once I figured out we were going to be dealing with vampires, I was able to enjoy the key strengths of the film.

Hap Jackson (Justin Long) is a regular guy who went out drinking with his buddies but has managed to snag himself a beautiful date in the process. He’s offered to drive Mina (Kate Bosworth) home for the evening and is invited in by her for a nightcap. Hap is blown away by her beauty, the house in which she lives, and her somewhat eager attitude to get more physically involved with him. The two of them sit on the couch in front of a fireplace to chit-chat, but the conversation is very one-sided. Mina reveals very little about herself but seems very interested in knowing more about Hap, who obliges her curiosity by answering her questions. The thing about her questions is that a lot of them seemed to be very pointed, or meant to get Hap to admit something negative about himself. This is where the primary tension of the film is, and it works…for a while. A little buzzed from the alcohol he’s ingested over the course of the evening, Hap falls asleep and has something of a nightmare about being in a cave before waking up and meeting Mina’s sister Lucy (Gia Crovatin). From there, it’s more of the same type of dialogue between the two of them until the film ends with a ghost story and the vampiric reveal.

You could certainly argue the movie is boring, as nothing of significance happens for a very long time. If you don’t suspect Mina is a vampire, there’s nothing to suggest that it’s a horror film until Hap’s nightmare. Surprisingly, I was actually pretty engaged with it up to a certain point. 90% of House of Darkness is just Hap trying to bend the facts about himself or dodge the questions of Lucy and Mina. Because Long is a decent actor, I think that he manages to carry the film with his performance. Unlike his characters in Tusk or Barbarian, in which he’s clearly a self-centered narcissist or sexual predator, the character of Hap is just a regular guy who has made a few very questionable or poor decisions, like drinking and driving, for example. All of the details about who he is are pulled from the dialogue. The somewhat charged reactions of Mina or Lucy, in which they passively criticize him, are good pops of tension because you don’t know where it’s all leading. If you know or suspect they’re vampires, it adds to the experience. I was drawn in because I wanted to know when she was going to strike and how Hap would respond to it, or if he would have to find a clever way out of the situation.

I was very disappointed, however, by how the film uses all this tension and characterization to just throw it out the window. I’m going to spoil the end of this movie because it’s directly tied to my main issue with House of Darkness. The final scene completely undid all of my enjoyment of the film and made me hate the dialogue that I was perfectly happy with only a few minutes prior. If you have an interest in seeing the movie, you can walk away from this review and see it for yourself, but I don’t really recommend it.

In the last scene, a third sister is suddenly revealed and it is at this point that Hap starts to get fed up with the spooky shenanigans of the ladies of the manor. Up till now, they’ve been cordial but a little off towards him. That disdainful side of them comes out in full force when Lucy tells a ghost story. It’s not really a ghost story as it is more of an origin story for her and her sisters. She divulges that they all essentially sold their souls to become predators of the night so they could get revenge on the men who raped one of them. From then, they continued to hunt terrible, no-good, very bad men throughout history and drink them dry of their blood. Hap finally comes to the conclusion that he shouldn’t be here anymore and decides to leave, but they lock the door. It’s at this point where the movie’s agenda culminates by having Hap threaten to hit one of them “across the room” unless they open the door and let him leave.

Up until this point in the movie, Hap has been portrayed as a pretty normal guy. Yes, drinking and driving is very bad, but there was no comment made by any of the characters in regard to his driving ability that would suggest he was actually impaired while driving. That’s the only detail about him that I can say was truly a transgression, as the other details about how he was separated from his wife or talking to his friend on the phone were probably supposed to be incriminating in some way to make him more of dick who deserved to die. The dialogue that was fleshing him out as a character was really supposed to make him seem like a bad dude, but it fails to do so and at no point does it suggest that he’s also physically abusive or deserving of the sisters’ hatred for him. And it is hate, by the way. The “ghost story” is worded in a way that it was written by someone who really seems to have a negative opinion towards men. By the time the story was over, I knew what the real point of this film was, and Hap’s sudden threat only made me more disgusted by how I had wasted my time.

If you don’t like men, fine. There are plenty of bad men out there who deserve scorn or ire for doing bad things. Hap does not come across as a bad guy in how the film portrays him; he comes across as a regular man. That’s the point I interpret the film to be making: “Don’t be fooled by him because even though he seems like a normal guy, he still is just after sex and is willing to hit a woman around to get his way in the end.” All the dialogue in the movie that was doing a good job of creating tension and building his character is undone because of this charged agenda. The ending left me deflated and angry at how it just undid all the good qualities of the movie. Despite the fact that the vampirism doesn’t really happen until the last few minutes of the movie, I’d say you would be better off stopping the film at the halfway mark if you wanted to enjoy it. Or, don’t watch it at all.

TL;DR

All the good characterization and tension that is established in the dialogue-heavy scenes of House of Darkness is undone by its hateful and charged ending. Once the mask is off and it’s clear what this movie is really about, there’s very little to be said about the good qualities it might have had. Despite all my enjoyment of the first two-thirds of the film, I cannot recommend this movie at all because of how much the ending really screws everything up.

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