House of Darkness is one of those horror movies that doesn’t seem like horror until a good way in. I knew nothing about it, other than it had to do with vampires, when I watched it. A guy named Hap, a bit drunk, is trying to score with a woman, Mina, who he’d just met in a bar. They don’t know each other’s names yet but she lives in a castle far from town. Just as things begin to get intimate, another woman, Lucy walks in. At this point Bram Stoker comes to mind. The two main female characters in the novel are Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra, so naming the sisters (for so the two are) after them lets you know you’re in vampire land. As Mina is off fixing a drink, Lucy takes Hap on a tour. He begins to suggest a threesome, but the women want to tell ghost stories instead.
In the guise of fiction, Lucy narrates their past as sisters who rescued an abused girl and who moved from town to town to wipe out the men. Hap is then startled by a third sister, Nora. He is now growing quite annoyed by their game and when he tries to leave, they attack him. Now, I was watching this on a Sunday afternoon after having been up late the night before. My motive in watching movies at such times is to help keep awake (as well as to have something to blog about). The pacing of House of Darkness was so slow that it struggled to meet my expectations in that regard. Still, it isn’t a bad movie. It has a feminist message, and as I read about it later I learned that it was intended to be a modern retelling of Jonathan Harker and the three women in Dracula’s castle.
Then I learned the film was written and directed by Neil LaBute. That name is seared forever in my mind as the man who tried to remake The Wicker Man. Suddenly things began to fall into place. Many stories—some would argue all—are retellings of classic tales. LaBute seems to enjoy trying to make them into something slightly different. His directorial vision, however, doesn’t seem cutting edge. House of Darkness is mostly banter, some of it clever, between Hap and the women he wants to seduce. I kept thinking, “It’s a work night for him,” and wondering how he’d manage to function the next day. Of course, I was probably projecting since I knew that, if I made it through this soporific afternoon, I would be at my desk bright and early the next day.
