Creators of ‘House of Good and Evil’ Should Probably Just Cut Their Hands Off (Review)

Written by: David Beers

Sometimes it’s hard to believe what is produced in Hollywood. I watched the movie House of Good and Evil, directed by David Mun and written by Blu de Golyer, wondering just who put money behind this film. I also found myself wondering, about half way through, if Blu de Golyer was mildly retarded and this was something his parents had helped him create to build his self-esteem. I actually went and looked it up, and the budget for the film was $150,000—so it’s possible.

The basis of this movie is: we have a troubled couple who loses a baby because of some domestic violence. Rather than divorce her husband, our heroine stays with him and actually moves far out into the country (I suppose that she thinks he won’t beat her if people can’t hear her scream? I don’t know). The house has no phones, a wood burning stove, and no power besides a generator outside. So right away, I’m wondering how a woman first lets a man beat her to the point her baby ejects prematurely from her womb, and THEN decides to basically move to a third world country with him.

Things get worse, though, unfortunately.

The relationship between the husband and wife plays out like two married schizophrenics. In seconds (THROUGHOUT THE MOVIE) the couple goes from screaming at each other, to holding and loving each other. It’s unbelievable to anyone who has ever had a long term partner. When my wife is angry with me, she’s angry for a good day or so. My house is a mess. She doesn’t clean. I sleep on the couch. Shit just gets bad, basically. These folks here though seem to forget moment by moment exactly what happened just before the current sentence leaves their mouth.

Things get worse, though, unfortunately.

They live in a duplex, with—shocker—a couple that the previous landlord had never met. Well, to put it simply, the main character keeps hearing a phone ringing over there, and she REALLY doesn’t like that. This is where things get confusing, and I’m not going to pretend like I fully understand it. Basically, the husband disappears to fight fires (he’s a firefighter) for days at a time, and the rest of the time we see close-ups of his wife’s face as she gets angry with the phone and meets the neighbors from next door.  There’s a lot of ominous music going on the whole time, but nothing even remotely frightening—unless you consider bad facial expressions directed at an unseen ringing phone frightening.

And then, the ending.

What to say here.

Imagine The Sixth Sense, but instead of all the buildup between Haley Joel Osment and Bruce Willis, you watched an acid produced episode of Sesame Street. Then at the end, there’s a huge twist that has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the film.

My recommendation for this film is that the people who created it cut their hands off so that they can never type another screenplay again.

Rating: 0/5

David Beers is the author of two horror novels: Dead Religion and The Devil’s Dream, Book 1. He blogs on general musings and lifesaving advice at http://www.davidbeersauthor.com