Open House

Director: Andrew Paquin (2010)

Starring: Rachel Blanchard, Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, Tricia Helfer

Find it online: IMDB, Amazon UK, Amazon US

Featuring, for some reason, cameos frpom Rogue and her Vampire BF off've True Blood, Open House is a movie in which a pair of serial killers strike on a nice suburban love-nest, taking the lovely Alice (Blanchard) hostage as they do. Tricia Helfer looks anorexic in a bikini and Stephen Moyer doesn't drink any blood. Well, it sounds odd hearing him speak in anything but a Southern drawl now. Open House is like Funny Games except there's not as much tension and no-one is quite as annoying. So much so, that one half of its villainous duo wears a white polo shirt and speaks in an effete, very middle-class manner. Ugh, middle-class killers. Thanks, but I'll stick with my very working class Freddies, Jasons and Michaels (original Michael, ta - I said working class, not white trash Rob Zombie).

Like its killers, Open House is an effective if predictable and slightly dull psychothriller. There's very little at play other than a pair of serial killers and that girl off've Flight of the Conchords being menaced. Being quite the fan of Flight of the Conchords, I found this quite distracting. In fact, I had to pause the movie two or three times just to go youtube the videos in which she appears. Anyway. Tricia Helfer has some sort of job which involves her leaving the house and Camp Serial Killer Man is a writer. This allows him to spend his days - his Business Time*, if you will - torturing poor Rachel Blanchard and murdering her window cleaners. Open House is the sort of movie in which a lot of innocent bystanders get murdered for no other reason than to amp up the bodycount. It's neither noticably bad nor remarkably good. The acting is fine, especially from Blanchard (the most beautiful woman in any room*) but not enough around the board to make this rise above STD dross. Although it does give me an excuse to post this, which is always nice:

* If you get that reference, you are awesome and I love you.