‘House on Eden’ Is Frustrating Found Footage That Should Have Stayed Lost [Review]
Kris Collins’ directorial debut tackles the found footage genre with a tale of paranormal activity that gets lost in predictable scares and an uninspired ensemble.
“I already made one shitty horror film in my lifetime. I don’t need to make another.”
Filmmaking has become increasingly accessible and technology has reached a point where someone can deliver exceptional visuals and tell a complete story with something that was filmed on a phone. Not every story lends itself to a low-budget and small-scale setup. However, these elements are not just accepted, but expected in many found footage horror films. There’s something naturally enticing about a low-stakes, low-budget found footage film that’s presented as a social media personality’s standard content. There can be such powerful payoff when these types of movies work, yet it’s become more common to ride on the subgenre’s coattails than to genuinely innovate and do something different with it.
It’s so easy to mess up this type of movie or deliver diminishing returns. For every Paranormal Activity, The Poughkeepsie Tapes, or Host, there are even more misfires like Bad Ben, Grave Encounters, and The Devil Inside. Kris Collins’ (aka social media personality KallMeKris) directorial debut has glimpses of promise despite its lackluster execution. House on Eden unfortunately proves to be more of the same and it doesn’t do nearly enough with its overdone setup.
House on Eden follows a paranormal investigation team – Kris (Kris Collins), Celina (Celina Myers), and Jay (Jason-Christopher Mayer) – who are ready to tackle their creepiest case yet – a house in the woods that’s been abandoned for years and said to be a hotbed for a rogue and wicked spirit. This is a simple enough premise that doesn’t overcomplicate things. Within the first few minutes, House on Eden has done all the necessary legwork to propel this story forward. Kris, Celina, and Jay fearlessly forge forward, yet it feels as if the movie as a whole has lost its compass and lacks direction.
The film opens on an apprehensive shot of a venus flytrap that functions as a symbolic portent of what’s to come and the dangers that hide in plain sight. There’s nuance during these opening moments that the film fails to sustain once it gets moving. What follows is a super-minimalist DIY production that essentially just has a cast of three. House on Eden understands how crucial it is for the audience to connect with its trio of investigators. Too many films of this nature fall apart before they even get started because their characters aren’t empathetic. There’s a lot of downtime with Kris, Celina, and Jay so that the audience understands their quirks and chemistry before they’re fighting for their lives. A recurring source of tension between Kris and Celina is how Kris seems more concerned about the project and her footage than she is about her team. It’s a plausible source of conflict for these characters, but it’s arguably the most hackneyed source of drama between these two. It’s too bad that none of these characters seem to work in the way that House on Eden intends. They’re an insufferable sort with real Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 vibes, and not in a good way.
Danger begins to tighten its grip around this trio of paranormal investigators when they each begin to exhibit unexplainable and erratic behavior. This is meant to be the big turning point in this saga. It’s another half-baked device that’s creepy in theory, but fails to do enough with the concept. Similarly, there are times when House on Eden has the opportunity to feature scary aberrations, only to instead defer to corrupt footage and blank screens where the absence of answers is meant to be scarier than any actual revelations. The film’s second-half really coasts on the titular location’s mundane-but-off-putting set design and frantic camerawork that’s meant to create a sense of fear, while the actual frightening content is few and far between, and left to the film’s closing minutes.
House on Eden’s most effective scene involves Kris, Celina, and Jay making contact with a spirit, but even this does the bare minimum with this reliable trope. It builds to a more creative version of the same idea that effectively turns to innocuous items like cat balls and music boxes for unnerving tension. This scratches at the surface of something creative and interesting that’s reminiscent of one of the eerier and more iconic scenes from out of the original Conjuring. More moments like this could have turned House on Eden into a worthwhile experience. There’s just not enough meat on these bones. There’s some evocative imagery during the film’s final ten minutes, even though there’s not a strong enough backstory to tie all this together. And by this point, it’s too little, too late.
There’s something to be said for Collins not biting off more than she can chew. She picks a scope and stylistic storytelling tool that can be very generous to debut feature films. But House on Eden routinely plays it safe and amounts to a forgettable film that lacks much of an identity. The found footage and influencer angle is a perspective that Collins understands and connects with on a personal level, there’s just too much monotony and not enough terror on display to justify House on Eden‘s rent.
‘House on Eden’ is exclusively in theaters on July 25.
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