House At the End of the Street (2012)

"You better get ready, 'cos at 3 o'clock today... I'm gonna rape you."

As far as PG-13 horror films in 2012 go, you could do a lot worse than this one. I probably would have skipped it altogether, but my wife bought a copy and I ended up watching it with her. It was a lot better than I expected it to be.

A 17 year old girl, Elissa, and her mother (played by Jennifer Lawrence and Elizabeth Shue) move in to a secluded house in the woods and quickly find out that a double murder occurred at the house nearest them only four years earlier. Elissa befriends Ryan (played by a guy who looks exactly like the rapist kid from "Welcome to the Dollhouse"), the only surviving member of the household, who just happens to be a boy her own age. The whole town hates Ryan because he's driving their property value down, so Elissa is his only friend. Her closeness to him reveals facts about the murder nobody else knew and soon things spiral out of control.

There were loads of plot twists in this movie and the big reveal doesn't happen until the very end. After 60 minutes, I thought I had the ending worked out, but I was way off. I like it when that happens. Even as the credits rolled, there were parts that didn't make sense. It could have been unresolved elements in the script, but I might have just missed something, too. With very first scene that sent my eyes rolling to the back of my head, I was expecting a haunted house movie, but it quickly moved away from that into a fairly captivating story.

As this was PG-13, there was very little blood and most of the violence happened off screen. I didn't know of the PG-13 rating before watching it, so I spent the entire time hoping Elizabeth Shue would show some skin. No such luck, of course, but she still looks great. Nobody in the cast was particularly good or bad, but the ever-shifting story held my interest until the end.

This wasn't a total waste of time, and probably would be really good for the demographic it's aimed at. With points lost for the lack of nudity and blood, it still fares quite well.

3/5