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How, exactly, did Neil LaBute, the writer and director of “House of Darkness,” pitch the movie to his financiers?
An investor with an eye on the bottom line might well look askance at the commercial prospects of a film that filters “Dracula” through a feminist lens and cross-pollinates it with comedic hemming-and-hawing, as in “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Add allusions to lurid B-movies like “The Vampire Lovers” and punctuate it with dialogue that makes David Mamet’s work seem loquacious, and you have one hot mess of a proposal.
Depending on who you talk to, Mr. LaBute is best known either for “In the Company of Men,” both as a play and a subsequent movie, or for his 2006 remake of the 1973 cult film “The Wicker Man.” The former was excoriated for its ambiguous take on misogyny; the latter for its pointlessness. Mr. LaBute has other accomplishments on his resume, including a successful run writing and directing for television, but a controversial initial splash and a conspicuous failure have a way of bracketing one’s career.
The question surrounding “House of Darkness” isn’t necessarily how audiences will respond to the film, but who the audience might be. Horror aficionados will appreciate the atmospheric mise-en-scene, recalling, as it does, the conventions of any number of vintage films. There’s a tidy jump scare in the mix, and some deliberately orchestrated moments of gore. Certainly, the director makes overt the sexual undercurrents informing genre films. I mean, you want sexy vampires? Mr. LaBute gives us sexy vampires.
Of course, sex with a supernatural being is an inherently complicated enterprise. It seems fair to say that it’s even more complicated with Mr. LaBute at the helm. “House of Darkness” flips the script on “In the Company of Men,” in which, you may recall, a pair of middle managers purposefully set out to abase a new employee, a woman with hearing loss. This time around, Mina Murray (Kate Bosworth, looking Whistleresque in a stately gown of white) brings home Hap Jackson (Justin Long), a youngish professional type with a suit, a tie, and a notion to bed his hostess. Complications arise.
Not least of these is Mina’s sister Lucy (Gia Crovatin), who walks in at the moment Mina and Hap begin a sexual liason. The latter is flustered by the interruption; Mina and Lucy, not so much. Later on we meet another sister, the elusive Nora (Lucy Walters). Each of the women moves with elegant, preternatural stealth.
Movie buffs with long memories will appreciate the allusion to the three brides seen prowling through the cellar of Bela Lugosi’s castle in the 1931 version of “Dracula.” They show up, as well, in the novel by Bram Stoker.
The scariest thing about Mina, Lucy, and Nora is the way they talk and, especially, what they say. Each is given to epigrammatic statements, and a tendency to ask uncomfortable questions. Their confrontational hauteur is in direct contradistinction to Hap’s command of the language or, rather, the lack of it.
Every time he opens his mouth there follows a stuttered array of extravagant qualifiers, weaselly excuses and, finally, abusive epithets. The hangloose affability Mr. Long displayed in Apple commercials back in the day is here supplanted by the nervous titter of an intellect out of its depth.
Mr. LaBute’s background as a playwright is evident in his preference for long takes, the small number of players, discrete set pieces, and an emphasis on words, always words. The dry affectlessness of his vision is an acquired taste, and his take on sexual politics both thunderingly obvious and slippery to a fault. An informal tally of the women who’ve seen the movie thought it problematic; the guys polled were too cowed to comment.
“House of Darkness” is a contrarian’s addition to the canon, and, as such, an entertainment approached cautiously and viewed with tongue firmly lodged in cheek.
(c) 2022 Mario Naves
This review was originally published in the September 14, 2022 edition of The New York Sun.
Too Much Art 