Review of The Open House

I normally don't leave reviews on IMDB unless I find that the reviews of a movie I have seen are based on reviewers who leave one or two sentences about why they didn't like the movie without giving any real basis as to their opinions. The majority of the good reviews on this movie were thought provoking and along the same lines as what I am going to write here. First off, I started watching The Open House for a few minutes, and then decided to see what the reviewers on IMDB thought. That being said, I was hesitant to continue watching until a friend of mine said they liked it, so I resumed watching. I have to say, this movie was not at all what I was expecting. I thought it was going to be more of a supernatural haunted house ghost story, but clearly the Netflix description lists it as a "Thriller/psychological thriller", which off the bat, lets you know that you will be in for some twists and turns. SPOILERS AHEAD: The beginning starts off in typical horror movie fashion: A mother, father and teenage son are all happily living together. Then tragedy strikes and the mother and son need to leave their home and venture to a relative's house in the woods. From there, weird and strange people show up, leaving you wondering who is out to get the family, and who is not. I found myself questioning each supporting character's motives as they stopped to say HI to the mother and son, or interacted with them in other ways. Who should they trust? Who should they be wary of? It's very much like real life. When you are in a new environment and you don't know anyone, you're on guard and making sure that you are cautious of who you reveal too much information to. We see this when the son cuts off his mother's conversation with the strangers she meets. Clues within the movie are subtle but if you pay attention, you will pick up on the "why" right away. The son points this out when he discusses the actual process of an "open house". He states that you give realtors the run of the house, and strangers come in when you're not home, and have access to the house. And who is to say whether or not the realtors check the entire house before leaving? It's random. And that is the point of the whole movie. Randomness. Some crazy person sees an open house, decides that the house is big enough to hide out in and observes the family members while they are sleeping and stalks them while living in the basement. He finally seizes his opportunity to torture and kill them, and then moves on to the next open house. Do we know who the killer is? No, but my assumption was that it was the boiler man, given the fact that we see a shadow similar to his stature in one scene when Logan gets up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and we see his shoes, which are clearly workman's boots. However, I was kept guessing until the very end, even so far as to think perhaps it was the police officers or even the neighbor's supposedly dead husband. . My guess as to why many people did not like this movie was because of the unsettled feeling they were left with, because it hits too close to a thought of "wow, this could happen to me." And indeed, it happens more often than we are led to believe. Was I left unsatisfied? In a way, yes. But that is the beauty of a well-written psychological thriller (NOT A HORROR MOVIE), it leaves you with questions, leaves your mind to be riddled with feelings of uneasiness and unsettled thoughts. After all, how well do we really know the people we deal with everyday? The people we let into our houses without a second thought about what their backgrounds may be...this movie makes us think, and maybe, cautions us to be more aware of who we allow into our lives and into our homes.