Greta Gerwig is the moment. With Barbie shattering box office records, the filmmaker steps up to the plate as one of the most rightly in-demand names in the business. Coming off such writing/directing projects as Lady Bird and Little Women, Gerwig proves she’s got the storytelling muscle, stylistic flair, and remarkable gumption to wrap timely social satire in a pretty pink bow. Barbie is an undeniable cultural phenomenon, beating out Oppenheimer as the film of the summer. Audiences of all ages have dressed up in pink to attend screenings, and the soundtrack has now officially hit 500 million streams. Barbie can’t be stopped, and the creative mind behind it hits a new creative apex in her career.
But did you know that prior to this chapter in her career, Gerwig had established herself as a horror icon? Way back in 2009, she appeared in a then-little-known horror flick called The House of the Devil. Coming off her co-starring role in the Duplass brothers’ horror-ish feature Baghead, she acted alongside other genre players like Jocelin Donahue (Insidious: Chapter 2, Offseason), A.J. Bowen (You’re Next, The Sacrament), and Tom Noonan (Manhunter, The Monster Squad) in the film written and directed by fellow of-the-moment filmmaker Ti West (X, Pearl). Her character, Megan, is featured in only a handful of scenes, but she manages to leave an indelible mark—her final scene is of particular interest, coming out of left field to deliver the film’s sucker punch (note: spoilers ahead).
The House of the Devil is West’s most criminally overlooked work. It’s a period piece set in the 1980s that galvanizes genre tropes while also doing something uniquely its own. While leaning into expectation, what you soon get is something altogether unholy, a ride into the mouth of madness. It sits in the brain like a handful of worms, wriggling and digging deeper into fleshy membrane. Stylistically, it sits somewhere between the 1973 Season of the Witch and films like 1980’s He Knows You’re Alone with its oddball weirdness packaged inside a tense thriller. It’s far better than it has any right to be—a slow-burning picture with playful angst, tightly wound cinematography, and period-perfect set design. It has all the makings of a cult classic, and more and more people seem to be discovering it these days. With the success of Barbie, perhaps now’s the time for it to achieve next-level success.
The House of the Devil tells the tale of Samantha (Donahue), a college student struggling to find a job in order to make ends meet. In the opening scene, we find her viewing a quaint little house for $300 a month (as if the film’s setting in the 1980s wasn’t apparent enough). She only has a few bucks in her pocket, but the landlord sympathizes with her plight and gives her five days to write a rent check. In her desperation, Samantha answers an ad for a babysitter position, a gig lasting only one night during the lunar eclipse, which is apparently all anybody can talk about.
With each turn, Ti West zigs when you think he might zag—the biggest swerve coming with Gerwig’s climactic scene near the end of act one.
Noonan, whose Mr. Ulman posted the advertisement, delivers a wonderfully aloof performance. His peculiar affectations creep under the skin like some sort of tapeworm. His beady eyes never quite land on Samantha’s face, and his speech rises in elongated breaths, eerily soothing and silky. He’s a genial man with a limp. He’s creepy, but in an adorable sort of way. When Samantha arrives, Ulman reveals that she won’t be babysitting a child but Ulman’s mother-in-law. She hesitates, but the $400 payout is too good to pass up. And who could blame her? She relents and agrees to stay for the night.
West methodically unravels the story from there, burning the wick slowly before letting it all go up in flames. You go in expecting a slasher flick—again, it’s set in the ‘80s—but you get an occult yarn instead. Behind the curtain, West clearly takes cues from Rosemary’s Baby and its ilk in both style and story: a young woman’s body taken over for a sadistic plot. In each case, it never ends well for the woman. But West makes sure never to copy and paste from his film’s most obvious predecessor; he instead uses the landmark film as a springboard to tell his own savagely disturbing story.
With each turn, West zigs when you think he might zag—the biggest swerve coming with Megan’s climactic scene near the end of act one. She drops off her friend at the Ulman estate, against her stern objections, and stops off in a cemetery for a quick smoke. She pushes in the cigarette lighter of her car and waits—and waits, and waits. West holds on her for an uncomfortably long time before letting the other shoe drop. Bowen’s Victor Ulman pops into the frame like some cheerily maniacal jack-in-the-box. He offers to light her cigarette, and she accepts. “Aren’t you the babysitter?” he asks. “No, I’m not the babysitter!” she responds. Victor, obviously annoyed, whips out a revolver and fires a single shot into her head, exploding it à la Scanners or Deadly Friend.
In 20 seconds, Gerwig cements her status as a bonafide horror icon.
Gerwig, who more recently played Babette in the drama/comedy/thriller White Noise, may only have a few scenes in the entire film, yet Megan’s death leaves a searing burn mark on the mind. There’s no forgetting her expression just before the gunshot, or the blood splatter on the windshield, or the spray of brain matter on vinyl seats. In 20 seconds, Gerwig cements her status as a bonafide horror icon. You only have a moment or two to breathe before Ti West pulls the tension even tighter.
The House of the Devil tantalizes and teases the brain, a minimalistic horror with flashes of brilliant violence. One of the greatest moments in horror history, Megan’s shocking demise is forged with daring and recklessness to usurp the audience’s assumptions—on which the entire film is based. “This one night changes everything for me,” Samantha tells Megan early in the film. But the change she endures obviously isn’t the one she seeks. Megan and Samantha both fall prey to a satanic cult hellbent on impregnating Samantha with “him” (we never learn the identity of “him,” but it’s safe to say it’s probably the devil’s offspring). In the end, the film revels in startling the audience—with Megan’s death poised in the deadly eye of the storm. FL
