Thanks for the memories!

Sick Product of a Sick System

Dreadfully Boring

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

A girl selling cookies is brought into a house and killed. Christina and her young brother Bobby come home from school into the same house. They live there with their father James Tarling. Their mother is in a nearby asylum. Eddy Duncan is Christina's boyfriend and Karen is her friend. Howie Rhodes is the handyman repairing the house. Sheriff Mark Sklar investigates the missing girl.This is a cross between a murder mystery and a killer horror. It's flawed in both genre but it has an intriguing premise. The opening could lead to either a fine slasher movie or a fine whodunit. First, they need to hold on the house a bit longer. I had to rewind to ensure that both shots are the same house. The slasher part is not gory enough which limits its horror potential. The whodunit is undermined by the few possible suspects and the initial push for a monster in the attic. The potential never gets realized but it is interesting to contemplate.

With the likes of a bad actress, Allison Lange, in the lead, what else can you expect? Straight hair hanging in her face and wearing tight tight dresses cut up to her kazoo, she does little to add suspense to this dull movie. She's that bad. I spent the entire movie laughing at her. At her, mind you. Amazing how through two thirds of the film she plays this helpless bimbo. Then suddenly in the last reel she becomes The Hulk, wiping everybody out. Who wrote this dribble? To my surprise, there is the presence of veteran actor John Savage. Far from his roles in the likes of DEER HUNTER and ONION FIELDS, he is so wasted in this. It's sacrilege to see him appear opposite the likes of Lange, who can't act her way out of a paper bag. Brendan Fehr is wasted as is Brad Rowe and Jerry Wasserman. The kid brother Lorne Stewart and the demented mom, Chilton Crane, were okay.I think the director had a thing for the leading lady with all the footage that went to her. A waste.

"Christina's House" is an interesting, low budget thriller / mystery film with a good cast. Don't watch it expecting too much though, and you'll probably only want / need to watch it once, but nevertheless, it's a fun, although at times slow, watch. Allison Lange makes her film debut here, and is rather good as Christina Tarling. Yes, the film is about her house and the strange going-ons that take place soon after she and her brother (Lorne Stewart) and father James (the excellent John Savage) move in.Christina deals with typical teenage issues, such as pressure from her boyfriend Eddy (the charming Brendan Fehr), her trouble making brother, problems between her father and boyfriend and so on. The Sheriff begins to investigate the disappearances of several teens who were all last seen at Christina's house, and in typical small-town Sheriff convention, he is not the nicest of men. Jerry Hasseman does a good job playing him. Crystal Buble is okay as Christina's friend Karen, and Brad Rowe is suitably creepy as the mysterious Howie.The ending to the film is somewhat of a let down, and at certain points the film leaves you wanting more, or a better explanation, but overall, a good effort from all involved, and the cast are great to watch.

Christina and her father and brother have just moved into an old rundown house where things go bump in the night, especially in the attic. Strange occurrences start happening like her diary disappearing, objects and furniture being moved around the house with messages of warnings, a dead body turning up and shady characters, but no one else seems to notice and she thinks that she is losing her mind. What makes matters worse was that her mum is in a mental asylum as she has basically lost her mind, so is Christina following in the same footsteps of her mum or is there more to it than some people are letting on? Not bad for a straight to video you ask? Ah, actually hold on. No really this is a below par film which borrows elements from every other horror film especially in the wake of "Scream", but it amazedly held my attention. I don't why but maybe it was the beautiful presence of Allison Lange as Christina… yep that was it was. Oh, surprisingly glossy production valves with some inventive camera angles and well-designed sets can't surpass a shamble of a story and script. The rag of a script is the usual dribble. While, the context of the film probably would've been better suited as an X-files episode. Anyhow, over-strained melodrama with horror elements (or clichés) comes to mind. Throw in red herrings, the usual teen antics, suspicious characters, investigating unusual happenings and a (laughable) twist and there you go. Even irrelevant sequences pop up that it could've done without and pacing was rather stodgy in parts. Oops I almost forgot, logic is pretty much thrown out the window, especially when it falls badly at the finale hurdle… the ludicrous revelation that turns into a trashy showdown that went on for too long. During this stage there was an overload of extremely bad puns and an unbelievably pitiful performance. Was there tension provided, no it's basically cheap thrills and cop-outs with a non-existed atmosphere, but a pulsating score was fair if sometimes out of place in certain scenes. Where's the splatter and fun you say, well you'll be disappointed as the deaths are too mundane and have little blood. Performances from John Savage, Brendan Fehr and Allison Lange were actually fair, well they didn't blow me away but for a film like this they were mostly reasonable with exception of one or two. These characters were the standard mould with the girl who's not ready to go all the way with her boyfriend and maybe going crazy, annoying brother, controlling father who seems to want his daughter for himself, snooping sheriff, sex-crazed boyfriend and quiet handyman. When it came to the ending, well not just some ordinary finale but a supposedly deeper ending it just didn't go down too well with me as it felt rather tact on.For what its worth it's a dud of a knockoff, but one that had enough elements to keep me entertained. But the ending or finale climax is where it went totally downhill and I couldn't give it more than a 3.