House at the End of the Street, review

House at the End of the Street

2012, PG-13, ***

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Max Theiriot, Elizabeth Shue, Gil Bellows

“House at the End of the Street,” is a decent suspenseful teen flick, because the storyline is original and Jennifer Lawrence is a strong female lead. It is very rare to find a tough female lead in a teen suspense movie. We also see Lawrence in this year’s ‘Hunger Games’ film, where she plays another tough female leading character.

Elissa (Lawrence, “The Hunger Games,” “Winter’s Bone,” “Like Crazy”) and her mother move to a new town and get excellent rent on a large house that backs up to woods that are a part of a state park. The neighbors are rather pretentious yet welcoming and tell them more about the house that backs up to their property. They already knew that there was a double murder that took place in the home 4 years before, however they did not realize that one of the family members still lives in the house.

Elissa takes a liking to Ryan (Max Theiriot, “My Soul to Take,” “Jumper”), the boy who lives in the ‘disgraced’ house. He is a few years older than her, attending community college and likes the fact that he compliments her on her singing and she's intrigued by his loneliness and strange demeanor. She feels very sorry for him and starts to portray the girlfriend figure. Her mother Sarah (Elizabeth Shue) who just started her new medical position at a local hospital talks to Officer Weaver (Gil Bellows) and asks about Ryan and if there's anything she could should be concerned about because her daughter's been hanging out with him.

At school, Ellisa’s new friends start to be kind of freaked out that she's hanging out with Ryan. Everyone hates on him and thinks he is trash. Soon enough she realizes that there is something definitely strange about him and certain things he says about his past and his sister become clear to her that something is not right. One evening while she is supposed to singing at the high schools ‘Battle of the Bands,’ she gets caught up in a nightmare with Ryan. As you can imagine there's a lot more to Ryan’s story, other than his parents being murdered by his younger sister who supposedly had severe mental problems.

I'm going to call this movie and an enhanced Lifetime Television movie special. Lifetime movies are excellent, especially if they are man bashing films or women gone insane, however this one I’m giving more credit to by calling it “enhanced” because Jennifer Lawrence does deliver in this film and make you want to watch the movie. Max Theiriot portrays is a convincing creepy dude, who you would ‘in theory’ want to stay the hell away from.

The film is worth watching in the theaters if you like mystery-suspense or horror films. I wouldn't really call this specifically a horror film, but the trailers are classifying it as one; it is more of a mystery-teenage, suspense-drama. It's definitely worth a watch, in theatres now!