It slightly amuses me that a kind of big deal has been made out of the fact that The House at the End of Time is Venezuela’s first horror movie. Honestly, I can’t name you a single other Venezuelan film in any other genre. That may be a barometer of my insularity, but I think what it attests to is more that horror pictures are the most exportable things going. Intriguingly, horror fans — often perceived as less intellectual than average moviegoers — seem to have far less resistance to subtitled films than the general public. Truthfully, calling this a horror film sells it short. (In fact, some horror fans dismiss it as not really being a horror film, which also sells it short.) It is most decidedly a film containing supernatural elements and there are a number of solid shock scenes.
But it’s ultimately not the kind of supernatural horror we’re used to. It’s not even the kind of supernatural horror it at first seems to be. What kind is it? Well, that can’t be revealed without revealing a lot more than should be told. The film is a puzzle — a puzzle where almost nothing is what it seems, but one where everything is connected and where everything will ultimately make sense — even to how the apparently innocent Dulce’s fingerprints got on the knife that killed her husband. Note, however, that it only makes sense if you accept what is actually a heavy-duty supernatural — or maybe paranormal — premise involving the house of the title.
At first glance, as I said, this looks like it’s going to be a straightforward haunted house movie. Even Dulce believes she’s living in a haunted house story (see subtitle on photo above). There’s also no shortage of genre trappings — including a really creepy and genuinely unsettling seance that isn’t quite like anything I’ve ever seen. And there are all the requisite scares and things that go bump in the night. But as the film unfolds, it becomes evident that there’s something much deeper than these trappings going on here. I won’t say it’s all perfect. The interiors of the house look rather tackier and cheaper than the exterior of the house suggests, for example. But the compensations are enormous.
I thought this was pretty darn good, if fairly clunky in a few places. Actually, some of that may be alleviated by a second viewing and knowing just how everything ultimately plays out. (I was mostly bothered by how the movie tended to introduce and give notable weight to a few seemingly extraneous characters for no obvious reason, but its resolution ties everything together in such a way that makes that complaint meaningless). Regardless, and whether it finally is a “real” horror film, I would say its shock effects are probably the most, uh, effective of any of the recent spate of great horror movies, and its plotting gloriously conceived. It’s certainly one to catch.
Well, I know where you could catch that second viewing…