Wednesday, May 1, 2024

'House of Darkness' Review: A Player Becomes the Prey

house of darkness

Regardless, the end result is an interesting misfire that only really carries itself across the finish line by relying on our sheer desire to see this guy get demolished and for it all to be over. Oh, and Bosworth being drop-dead hypnotic as the lady, Mina, who's invited a bar-bro home to her freezing cold country castle. LaBute made a name for himself writing about masculinity and gender disparity so watching it play out in a spooky setting is refreshing. The film itself, though, isn't able to sustain under the staging and setting, so a stagnancy sets in. Hap thinks of himself as a “decent guy,” and because Long is such an inherently likable actor, some may give his character the benefit of the doubt.

Real-Life Couple Justin Long and Kate Bosworth Play a Deadly Game in Trailer for House of Darkness - PEOPLE

Real-Life Couple Justin Long and Kate Bosworth Play a Deadly Game in Trailer for House of Darkness.

Posted: Thu, 28 Jul 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]

House passes potential TikTok ban that could speed through Senate

A frequent chronicler of power games between the sexes, LaBute excels at this kind of loaded repartee, in which characters communicate their intentions via subtext. The delivery may be too stilted to take at face value, but that’s all the better for keeping audiences guessing. As the evening escalates, Hap becomes more direct in his douchebaggery, even going so far as to hit on Mina’s sister Lucy (Gia Crovatin) after she appears, equally lovely and every bit as enigmatic. House of Darkness finds writer-director Neil LaBute just as acerbic as ever, although he's made more compelling statements on sexual mores.

Gia Crovatin

TikTok has blasted lawmakers’ efforts to potentially ban the app as an affront on free speech and disputes lawmakers’ suggestions that it is beholden to China or any government. The unorthodox maneuver could expedite the crackdown’s path through Congress, where negotiations had slowed after an earlier attempt hurtled through the House last month. With growing support in the Senate, the legislation appears more likely than ever to become law. The month ahead will bring new films from Alex Garland, Luca Guadagnino, Dev Patel, and more. To help you plan your moviegoing options, our editors have selected the most notable films releasing in April 2024, listed in alphabetical order.

horror comedy

House lawmakers overwhelmingly advanced an earlier version of the legislation targeting TikTok last month, but tying the issue to the aid package, which has broad bipartisan support in both chambers, could expedite its passage through the Senate. House lawmakers escalated efforts to restrict video-sharing platform TikTok, renewing pressure on the Senate by advancing a bill Saturday that would force the company to be sold or face a national ban as part of a broader package sending aid to Israel and Ukraine. House of Darkness, now on Hulu, is a horror-comedy that (very) loosely adapts Dracula.

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While Mina is out of the room fixing drinks, Hap calls a male friend to brag about his hookup. Following an evening of drinking, flirting, and kissing, Mina begins unbuckling Hap’s pants. Summary Driving home to her secluded estate after meeting at a local bar, a player (Justin Long) out to score thinks his beautiful, mysterious date (Kate Bosworth) will be another casual hook-up.

By its generic title alone, House of Darkness seems destined to blend into the million-zillion streaming menus we scroll through mindlessly, but does it deserve such a fate? After House lawmakers passed the earlier TikTok legislation in just over a week, many senators called for slowing down deliberations in the upper chamber. Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), whose committee has jurisdiction over the bill, initially expressed concerns about whether the proposal could withstand legal scrutiny and called for hearings. House of Darkness is unique in staging and intent but that never propels it beyond being a curiosity. The performances are solid and the experiment is more than clear but it overstays its welcome about mid-way and never offers more than new rooms of the house to explore and one more person to talk to beyond the starting duo.

But the real mystery is why a new Neil LaBute movie doesn’t seem to be on anybody’s radar. Buried among the world premieres at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, the project debuted practically in silence and darkness, suggesting that LaBute (who’s been dabbling in television since the MCC split, creating “Billy & Billie” for DirecTV and “The I-Land” for Netflix) may have lost his cultural cachet. But judging by the result, this wicked little movie suggests his voice may be uniquely suited to the broader conversation.

'House of Darkness' Review: This Creepy Ghost Story Burns Too Slow to Be Effective - Collider

'House of Darkness' Review: This Creepy Ghost Story Burns Too Slow to Be Effective.

Posted: Wed, 07 Sep 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]

The effort is likely to face significant legal hurdles, as have previous attempts by the Trump administration and states to force a sale or ban of the app. “I’m glad to see the House help push this important bill forward to force Beijing-based ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok,” Warner said in a statement to The Post. The move represents one of the most significant threats to the U.S. operations of the wildly popular app, which is used by roughly 170 million Americans, but whose China-based parent company ByteDance has long sparked national security fears in Washington. Get the scoop on new movies with exclusive clips, and more when you sign up for Lifetime Movies email updates. “Darkness” broadcasts its intentions early, underscored by the blood-red fonts, nostalgic score and other self-aware nods to classic horror.

An argument could be made that going into this film knowing absolutely nothing ahead of time will yield the best results, but even then it's hard not to imagine growing impatient. House of Darkness isn't exactly a two-person gig, though, as one of the ways the story pushes itself along is with the introduction of Gia Crovatin (Billions, Syfy's Van Helsing) as another dweller in the manor who only serves to help Long's tipsy tomcat dig himself into a deeper hole, desire-wise. This definitely aids the back half of the film but, simultaneously, presents more of the same, adding to the dastardly repetition at work. Dracula fans may latch onto small tells and talismans here and there but the final result is still a movie that makes its point early and then doesn't offer much afterward. Would House of Darkness have been made and presented differently outside of the pandemic era or was the idea always to blend a two-person date play into something vampiric (with female empowerment overpinnings)?

The Senate plans to take the matter up Tuesday, Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement emailed to The Post. “The Senate now stands ready to take the next step,” Schumer said. John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Find a list of new movie and TV releases on DVD and Blu-ray (updated weekly) as well as a calendar of upcoming releases on home video. House of Darkness is rated R and will be released theatrically by Saban Films on September 9, 2022, and on digital and On Demand on September 13.

house of darkness

Part cautionary tale, part post-#MeToo ghost story, this sly chamber piece uses silence and darkness to its advantage, allowing audiences’ imaginations to fill in the spaces and shadows of an atypical one-night stand. “Policymakers have legitimate concerns about Chinese-made apps and reciprocal access to China’s digital market, but they should address those issues through policies that are specific, scalable, and sound,” Castro said in an email to The Post. We rank every one of the British director's movies by Metascore, from his debut Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels to his brand new film, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. With the arrival of Zack Snyder's latest Rebel Moon chapter on Netflix, we rank every one of the director's films—from bad to, well, less bad—by Metascore.

But since then, a number of senators have come out in favor of the proposal and plans to tuck it into the foreign aid package. Cantwell announced Wednesday that she now supports the legislation after lawmakers agreed to give ByteDance more time to sell off TikTok. It’s pretty clear what Hap Jackson (Justin Long) is hoping will follow when he offers Mina Murray (Kate Bosworth, eerily difficult to read) a ride home from the local bar. Guys like Hap refer to nights like this as “getting lucky,” though he’s almost certain to have a different view of things once this tryst is through. The lucky one here in fact is Mina, whose motives aren’t nearly as apparent — the uncertainty of which drives the sense of creeping dread that percolates over the next hour and a half, depicted practically in real time. After meeting at a bar, Hapgood "Hap" Jackson goes back to Mina Murray’s remote, castle-like estate.

This clearly isn’t his first one-night stand — nor Mina’s, as a pile of men’s loafers seen over the opening and closing credits unsettlingly suggests. But is infidelity enough to justify whatever Mina and her sister(s) have in store? This is where LaBute is shrewd to leave things vague, inviting audiences to project their own reasons on the film’s inevitable reckoning — a horrific payoff that recalls LabBte’s laughable 2006 remake of “The Wicker Man,” only more intentionally funny this time around. Mina lives in an ominous American castle (Arkansas’ not-at-all-intimidating Dromborg Castle supplied the location, while nighttime exteriors and candlelit parlors give things a fittingly Gothic vibe), and though she claims the two have the place to themselves, Hap keeps catching glimpses of figures at the other end of darkened corridors. But he’s too buzzed and too horny to care, and besides, this clumsy pickup artist isn’t being entirely honest with her either. When Mina asks whether he’s married, Hap offers a cryptic “Not at the moment.” And though he doesn’t overtly pressure her for sex, there’s innuendo in practically everything he says.

house of darkness

But here is “House of Darkness” anyway, a talky, allegorical horror film that delivers plenty of LaBute’s typically sharp irony and observations but little raison d’être. It is sometimes insightful, just not about women, who outnumber the men three to one. Writer-director LaBute’s next stab at genre filmmaking is the gothic thriller House of Darkness, which IGN can exclusively debut the trailer for today. You can watch the trailer via the player above or the embed below. After writer-director Neil LaBute's long absence from movies, his big-screen comeback flips the dynamic of 'In the Company of Men' for horror crowds. “Legislators who are genuinely concerned about social media platforms’ practices have better options at their disposal, and we continue to urge lawmakers to lean in to those rather than undermining the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans,” Johnson said.

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