Truly Dreadful Film

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Coming to DVD July 22nd, The Perfect House starts with Mike (William A. Robertson) and Marisol (Andrea Vahl) being shown around a really nice and big house house by a seductive real estate agent. It's obviously too good to be true, and they're being lied to and schemed into possibly buying it. There's no mention of the house's past, but the movie is constructed with long, detailed flashbacks of the previous owners and the owners before them, who were all driven mad by the so-called "dream home". The first flashback is called "The Storm", and it's about a family of four hiding out in the basement in hopes of surviving a terrible storm raging outside. While together in a closed space, we see how nasty the matriarch of the family is, always saying rude and hurtful things. The father however, is the calm one who is supportive of the kids, and they all acknowledge that something is wrong with their mom. Of course, we as the viewers know that she's possessed, and that explains the weird behavior. And, lets just say things get out of hand and go in a direction that I didn't see coming, and the result is a rather large amount of blood spilled.Then, after a few moments of seeing Mike and Marisol's walk-through, we get another flash from the past. In "Chic-Ken" we watch John Doesy (Jonathan Tiersten), as he cages humans up in the basement and murders/mutilates them. His recent capture is a young man who is way too whiny and complains too much. So much in fact that I actually was hoping for his on screen death (laugh). In the cage beside him is a young woman who has been caged up for the better part of five years, and she hates and envies anyone John kills who isn't her because she'd rather be dead than live like an animal in the cage any longer. Like the previous story, when things come to a conclusion, it's very bloody. This is definitely the most graphic of the three stories told, as we see things like eyelids being cut off."Dinner Guest" is a wraparound story. The flashback scene starts the movie off, before we see Mike and Marisol touring the house, but it doesn't conclude until the final act. We see a psychopath take a family apart, the mother (Felissa Rose) is tied up as she's forced to witness terrible things, like her children being murdered. This also ends in a very gory fashion, and as the film comes to an end, we're left with knowing what Mike and Marisol have to look forward to by buying the house. There's not a lot of character development, so not getting to know the characters intimately stings a bit, but this is a feature that's more focused on the macabre aspects, so it's semi-excusable. The acting suffers at times throughout from all stories including Mike and Marisol's walk-through. But, Sleepaway Camp star, Felissa Rose puts on her best performance to date. And the makeup FX are decent, but far from great. You can see it's clearly a low-budget flick, but as a whole, it works. There's always room for improvement, and The Perfect House is no exception, but it's an entertaining movie.

"I'd go so far as to call The Perfect House one of the most pointless, soulless, ugly, and disgusting horror films of the past ten years...and that's precisely what these filmmakers are after." - Scott Weinberg, FEARnet Mr. Weinberg's comments are so dead-on, I just had to repeat them. I wished I'd read his review before I wasted $5 on this sub-amateurish torture-porn farce that's really only tolerable when it's making fun of itself, which unfortunately isn't often enough.The Perfect House is something like a car wreck: a film so poorly acted, so abominably shot and edited that most times you simply can't believe what you're seeing. It's hard to look away from because you can't imagine any filmmaker would expect this tripe to be taken seriously. And that's just the technical aspect.This is a cobbled-together home-made POS with not one shred of redeeming value as a horror film (or any film). These "filmmakers" are not movie lovers. It's doubtful whether they've even seen a movie or maybe are just incompetent at operating the $200 software package they obviously used to edit with (after they recorded it on their five-year-old Handycam). No, these people are hucksters pure and simple. They know they're pulling one over on you and worse, they want you to know it. Either that, or they are dumber than they obviously assume that you are.Here's a quick run-down of the film's "plot": It's an Anthology film (of course...since all the 'plots' are ludicrously flimsy and clichéd, unable to sustain a full length film certainly) about an "evil" house that drives ordinary people to commit murderous acts (weak attempts at the type of black humor horror done quite well in EC Comics stuff like "Creepshow"). Almost all the segments feature ridiculously hollow, hammy villains who mete out particularly vile tortures for no reason...to many children, no less. I guess they couldn't get away with torturing animals, thank god. There are few good "effects" --- most of the violence is done in cutaway or is blurred or sped-up to mask the VFX guys incompetence or the lack of budget. Speaking of budget, what ghetto did they film this supposed "dream house" in?Yes, TPH is gory, gross, and nauseating. Some of the best horror films are. What they are not, is puerile, shoddily made, and insulting. Sam Raimi's Evil Dead, this is not. It's not even fourth-rate swill like "Don't Look in the Basement" or a camp horror film that's a pleasure because it is so bad (the "Sleepaway Camp" films featuring Felissa Rose, who does scream well here). These guys might be able to daydream about being that good one day, but they'll probably just wind up watching these other films on cable.Just because a film has no money doesn't mean it has to suck. But that requires technique, good camera set-ups, and actors who actually are capable of and want to do a decent job. Oh yes, and a script whose lines aren't complete recycled garbage from bad '60s drive-in fare and actually reflect how people speak, with hints to their characters' motivations and back stories and....What's the point? If you agree that those things are important, run as fast as you can from this film. It is a dangerous piece of "art" --- simply because making it a success will no doubt egg on other charlatans to follow the money trail with yet another poorly made con job.

The perfect house is another movie, of the thousands already, with an "evil" house having his sway on its residents behavior. The kind of movies, labeled as horror, that i believe what i am going to see, i have already seen it before, but i watch them, just for fun and because i want to.And this movie is no exception of the rule. Predictable, bad acting, poor story and nothing original. The acting is so awful, especially when the victims are in danger and threatened to be killed, where no action or reaction comes from them. It has some good gory and torture moments, but nothing you haven't seen before, and it was better than this one of course. All movies, especially horror ones, have many similar scenes and stories, and influence is logic and acceptable. But mixing in a movie, stuff from well known movies, like Hostel, Saw, and Braindead for example, doesn't make it any good or unique. Also there's is a total rip off from Dexter, a really bad one and terribly executed.I am always eager to fresh ideas in a theme that's already been written and seen before too many times, hoping to see something new with a different twist or view, but most of the times, it fails. An evil house, without explanation of its evilness, it's not something people will follow.Except the gory moments, another good thing in the movie, is the sexy Monique Parent, the real estate woman, but a sexy woman, is not enough or the reason for someone to watch a horror movie.A total pass from me, and the creators of each low budget and less promotional horror movies, doesn't have to create different accounts to write propagandic reviews and give high ratings, so they can trick people to watch their films.2 out of 10.

Most directors have a goal in mind when they make their movie, and if the movie does what it should in terms of entertainment, then we call that movie a success.Unfortunately for this film, the director makes the mistake of trying to disturb you and terrify you with graphic scenes of torture and gore.Ho hum. It's been done before, and many times even better than this.Disturbing the viewer is a good goal in a horror flick. But extended scenes about torture and gore bore-me-half-to-death. When I can flip forward through entire scenes and be like, "Ok, so long story short, she dies this way, he dies that way, killer does this, killer does that.." and get the entire story without actually needing to watch it, then we have a very shallow idea on the screen indeed. I can literally skip entire scenes and miss nothing, and the rest of the movie still makes perfect sense. In other words, there is no point to this movie except extended scenes of suffering and gore. You may skip them or watch them at your discretion, but why bother watching them when they really add nothing? It's really just more gratuitous than effective, and if you are the sort of person who actually enjoys watching it then I suggest you get your head checked.