Our House: Great Characters, Unoriginal Story

Our House is the feature-length directorial debut of Anthony Scott Burns, who also directed the excellent “Father’s Day” segment of Holidays (2016), reviewed here. Nathan Parker wrote the screenplay, based on a 2010 film, Ghost from the Machine, written by Matt Osterman.

Our House is set in a time that evokes the 80s (there’s an interesting ambiguity about time that resembles what David Robert Mitchell did in 2014’s It Follows). Our House centers on genius college student, Ethan (Thomas Mann) who is obsessed with creating a machine that forges a kind of wireless network of electricity (how it works exactly was a bit obscure). His scientific obsession, in time-honored fashion (going back as far as Frankenstein), causes him to neglect his family—something he soon lives to regret when his parents are killed in a car accident. In the wake of his parents’ death, Ethan must relinquish college and his fledgling career as an inventor to get a job, drive a minivan, and take care of his two younger siblings—Matt (Percy Hynes White) and Becca (Kate Moyer). As the months struggle by, Ethan is eventually lured back to his project, and it’s not long before he discovers that the device animates the dead—and not only the recent or the happy dead. Ethan unwittingly unleashes darker spirits that start to prey on his family and his neighbor, so he must, again, give up science and devote himself to protecting his family.

Check out IFC Midnight’s official trailer for Our House here:

There is much to like about Our House. Thomas Mann, Percy Haynes White, and Kate Moyer all give superb performances as the grieving, shell-shocked siblings. Indeed, the best part of the film comes early on, as Ethan gives up what he loves—with clear difficulty but also without a second thought—to become a parent at way too young of an age to his young brother and sister. Their routines, and Ethan’s struggles with a responsibility thrust on him too early, are very effectively rendered. In some ways, the realism of the three young people’s bereavement and their efforts to continue without the structure provided by their parents makes the supernatural part of the film appear all the more artificial and contrived.  It’s almost as if the director knew this, and so he dwells on the realistic even mundane business of the family for over half the film. The supernatural, when it intrudes, intrudes late.

Thomas Mann as Ethan

Even when Our House begins its shift into the supernatural, the first thing Ethan’s machine does is to bring back the children’s parents in ways that resemble how any bereaved person might conjure up those they loved and who loved them. As Ethan says, “Our consciousness has a frequency. Where does all that energy go when we die?” The “energy” of Ethan, Matt, and Becca’s parents might well have stayed in the house, watching over and protecting their children. There’s a realism here—the children’s grief, their parents’ energy wanting and needing to stay near them, to take care of them—that is the best part of the film. There’s a real sense that Ethan’s machine is in fact just amplifying the energy of those who have passed on.

One of the creepy moments, as something strange appears to Matt (Percy Hynes White)

When things veer more squarely into the supernatural, the film loses some of its edge, despite some genuinely creepy moments. Not least, we enter terrain we’ve been in many times before, both in this decade (the Insidious franchise) and in the 80s. With his machine that changes and amplifies matter, Ethan is self-consciously meant to evoke Seth Brundle from David Cronenberg’s 1986 The Fly (there’s a poster of the film on the garage wall). By the end of the film, Our House is evocative (too much so) of Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist (1982).

Ethan and Becca (Kate Moyer) in the garage, under the shadow of a poster of The Fly

On the one hand, Our House is operating as a nostalgic text (like much other recent horror, including Stranger Things). But the nostalgic resonances here only served to make the viewer wonder why we need this film. I liked the characters enough to watch happily enough through to the conclusion, but the engaging characters that the film did such a good job of establishing early on seemed, in the end, to be squandered on an overly unoriginal plot.

Grade: B-

You can rent Our House on Amazon: