There are few films that garner an equal level of disbelief, vitriol, and actual interest. Open House is the “Rick Roll” you never see coming, the one right behind the most desirable of links you just had to click on. It’s the culmination of Netflix’s excess of money and customer data. Every time you click on a film, it notes the genre, actors, era of creation, rating, and a plethora of other information, all to help them determine what moves to make. Open House is that culmination. A remainder on an equation that normally rounds out whole. So without mincing words, no one needs to watch this film, and no one should, but in either case, it was still a film I ended up watching. So allow me to spoil it for you and save you from having to click on the Netflix’s equivalent to a YouTube “Extended Rick Roll”.

So, the plot of Open House is pretty simple, just as horror movies tend to be. In the first 10 or so minutes, a seemingly loving family is broken when a young boy’s father is run over in front of him. Distraught and left penniless, Logan (Dylan Minnette of 13 Reasons Why fame) and his mother Naomi (Piercey Dalton) move out to her sister’s vacation home on the outskirt of a small town in the woods. The home is up for sale and they would only have to vacate for the open houses. Working through the recent death is tough for both parties. Logan is an avid runner with dreams of the olympics and Naomi just wants her life to suck less. In a series of creepy events, they meet local characters in the town. However, the only thing that makes these events creepy is the music, otherwise they would just be normal. Every character is framed as possibly being sinister. It is a horror film after all. Martha (Patricia Bethune) is a recent widow who we later find out could be suffering from dementia. Then there is Chris (Sharif Atkins) who runs a local clothier who innocently shows interest in Naomi, to Logan’s disdain. Chris repeatedly runs into them, even showing up at their open house. Sinister? No, it isn’t.

After they arrive at the house, the notice a bunch of weird things. The house has a kind of dungeon like basement with a tunnel in it that has caved in and no working lights. The water heater keeps going out. Cell phones go missing. Doors open on their own. Logan begins to think that open houses are a weird custom, letting stranger wander around your house alone. Both Chris and Martha continue to show up unannounced, offering help, but their overeagerness is framed as possibly ill intended. At one point, Naomi and Login come home to find their house broken into, with music playing and a dinner table set by candlelight. The cops claim its most likely bored kids. At their wits end, Naomi finds Logan’s phone by the water heater and she begins to suspect that her own son is the one behind all of the strange events.

In the final scene, a scared Logan and Naomi turn to Chris. Asking him to spend the night downstairs and help watch the place. After a moment of peace, a loud noise brings Logan downstairs where we finally are greeted with our answer. *DRUMROLL* Turns out it was none of these people. Logan goes outside to find Chris dead in the driveway while a shadowy figure comes up behind him to knock him out and cover him with a bucket of water, freezing him in the winter air. Meanwhile, upstairs his mother is tortured. In the end, Logan accidentally stabs his mother in confusion, is chased into the woods by the shadowy figure, and is murdered as the sun rises. Well, think this article is long? The film is way longer. Open House closes showing you a car going from town to town, looking for open houses to run the same murder scam over again. In the end, you never see the murder’s face or learn anything about him.

Needless to say, I ran straight to the reviews on both Netflix and Rotten Tomatoes. I have never seen so many 1 star reviews that decidedly ruin the film in the first sentence, all to save you from yourself. But this begs the question, Is the film bad just because of the way it ends? Honestly, the acting is pretty good, the editing isn’t bad, but it’s biggest sin is pulling the same suspense stunt repeatedly. Without advancing the story, the pilot light goes out several times, the characters interact by bumping into each other or dropping off some banana bread and saying eerie things. Basically, it only seems strange because it’s framed that way. The unseen character is even considered by Logan, and yet the audience feels they deserved some pay off in the murder being a known character. It was a risky decision, and one I think Netflix won’t be making again. But, I think that Netflix is going to get the wrong idea. The film wasn’t bad because of its ending, it’s because of all the ways the ending was hidden from the audience in the form of every red herring in the book. It’s bad because it took so long to get there. That difference should be taken into account. But, as long as the films are going to be made using algorithms and user data, its a mathematical certainty that there will be some strange remainders. Netflix is never going to give that up and in doing so will always let us down.

~* 4/10 *~