Anthony Scott Burns’ latest film “Our House” certainly took the scenic route from concept to screen. The Canadian horror movie—making its World Premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival in advance of its multi-platform release via IFC Midnight—is a remake of a U.S. indie from 2010, “Ghost in the Machine” (also known as “Phasma Ex Machina”). Burns’ and writer Nathan Parker (“Moon”) refashioned the sci-fi concept into something a little more domesticated and spooky, in addition to pumping up the production values. The rejiggered result, “Our House,” doesn’t set its ambitions much higher than the VOD market, and its haunting is passable if not all that spooky.
At the center of “Our House” is Ethan (Thomas Mann), a college student focusing on his studies at the expense of nuclear family ties. Ethan’s current project is an electromagnetic inductor—essentially, a spinning gizmo that lights up and uses lots of power, designed to offer wireless electricity Nikola Tesla-style. After a tragic accident, Ethan has to put his studies on hold to take up guardianship of siblings Matt (Percy Hynes White) and Becca (Kate Moyer). Only when he resumes work on his science project under the cover of the night does he come to discover that application has more to do with the supernatural than the energy sector. Also, starring is Nicola Peltz (“Transformers: Age of Extinction“) as Ethan’s college girlfriend, though the actress isn’t given a great deal to do.
Mann is largely unconvincing as a young man thrust into the role of parent and bereft of the charm seen in his roles in “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” and “Kong: Skull Island.” Part of this flatness is a result of director Burns’ tendency to cling to clichés like a life raft. Ethan sleepwalks through his role of guardian in all the expected ways: delivery pizza for dinner, struggling to get his siblings to school on time, working a dead-end job only for the house to fall into disarray. For a film that is ostensibly about grieving, Ethan never quite gets his turn to do so and likewise doesn’t share a rich bond with his family members, living or dead.
On an aesthetic level, “Our House” opens with a great deal of promise: the image and aural pairing of a needle dropping, and dusk-set establishing shots that pop with autumnal colors. Alas, the film doesn’t manage to sustain the potent intro. Ethan has repaired his father’s record player—establishing a technical know-how—but music, whether score and soundtrack tunes, can’t quite catch in the memory. Recent horror favorites like the “Insidious” franchise show how much dread a contrapuntal song can bring to a haunted house flick, and Burns seems to have wasted an opportunity here.
Likewise, the visual place-setting becomes an exhausted motif. Aerial views of the sleepy town of Franklin recur habitually, a kind of fodder to measure pacing without really contributing anything meaningful. That said, no amount of establishing shots could begin to pinpoint exactly where this one falls in respect to the 49th parallel, as “Our House” unsuccessfully attempts to discover the markers of its Canadian shooting location.
Burns and collaborators call upon a reserve of energy—and the majority of the special effects budget—for the film’s climax. At this juncture, exposition has straightened out the source of the specters and the stakes are more direct and compelling. The setup to the final scares is a bit of a stretch (perhaps a nod to “The Beyond,” a classic Italian film of this ilk) with the family discovering a tunnel and bomb shelter in the basement, but the images finally make an impression as the tension escalates.
Earlier sequences are either tonally ambivalent, such as the children floating objects, or far too obvious. When Becca announces her goal of holding her breath for a minute underwater, a bathtub scare is all but a certainty (already an odd choice for an unsupervised activity). A more apocalyptic tilt would have been welcome—think John Carpenter’s underrated “Prince of Darkness,” also centered around a supernatural object with a strong visual pull—but even the obligatory coda is harmless.
We never begrudge Ethan for his ambitions, and the critical position of Burns’ film towards its character is unduly harsh. Right from the get-go, the father’s lack of support for his son’s education and inventive mind comes across as contrived, imploring Ethan to “get his priorities straight.” Most baffling about the whole enterprise is how Ethan, as a reluctant guardian of two with no mention of an inheritance or insurance payout and supporting his family on a part-time retail sales clerk job, plans to pay the utility bill spikes caused by his infernal machine. Surely, that is the true unmined horror of “Our House.” [C-]