You know that old movie ‘Jaws’ made it so you never wanted to use a gumball machine ever again, after its harrowing depiction of an enchanted sets of jawbreaker that gave many, many people toothaches?
Well, looks like they’re trying it again with ‘House of the Dread’, a new and big-budget horror movie about a bunch of teenagers who go along to a giant, abandoned mansion that’s being used as the site of the most rockin’ party of the century, but it turns out to be a total snooze-fest. There’s this one harrowing scene from the trailer where they all show up, this bunch of teenagers clutching bottles of vodka and six-packs of beer, and they find a bunch of people sitting around talking quietly while drinking orange juice. And then…the doors are locked.
Spooky, but there’s been a bit of controversy surrounding it. I get that. The main antagonist is a lawyer who does conveyancing, and he wants everyone to come to his party so he can give a lecture on how property conveyancing is the future of the housing industry. Fairly innocuous, but the main conflict of the film is how the main teenagers came there to have a wild party, but they found only a house…of the dead. That is, the party is dead, and there are regularly scheduled lectures about things to do with conveyancing and how to use coupons to save on your weekly shop. I have to say, if I was a conveyancer and i saw my profession being represented in that way, I’d be annoyed. Apparently the audience has to sit through the entirety of the lecture, and it’s very accurate because they looked up a conveyancing office near Richmond where the movie was filmed and got their input on conveyancing facts. So they got all this conveyancer input, and then made a conveyancer the bad guy? So rude. Maybe the rowdy party teens will finally leave the mansion at the end of the night having learned something about the property market. But I have no idea how it ends, so…I have to go and see it. Review pending.
-Gregory