Friday 9 May 2014

HOUSE OF DUST - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Moronic horror movie redeemed by presence of super-hot starlet

I look scary, but this movie is so stupid, I doubt I'll scare you.

Hi there. As stupid as this movie is,
you'll get to see me in a nice variety
of shorts, underwear and tops that'll
accentuate my cleavage and breast size.
House of Dust (2013) *1/2
Dir. A.D. Calvo
Starring: Inbar Lavi

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is, in no way shape or form, a good movie. In fact, it's downright stupid. It actually took four writers to cobble together this derivative screenplay which also has the distinction of featuring some of the worst dialogue in recent memory. One wonders, actually. what could possibly be more stupid? The movie or the fact that it required four wordsmiths? There are so few redeeming qualities on display that I'm not sure why anyone would bother to sit through it, but I suppose one might give the filmmakers some credit for keeping you watching anyway.

On the plus side, there is plenty of killing. This is always a good thing. The first scenes have a few pubic hairs worth of promise as we watch a scene involving the torture of a lunatic in an asylum that eventually descends into a gore-fest involving drills being driven into skulls as well as people being burned alive in a crematorium.

So far, so, uh . . . well, I won't say good, but certainly watchable. Alas, it's revealed that the sequence is taking place in the past and we skip ahead a few decades into the future, long after the asylum has been shut down and left to rot on the campus of a university.

Here's where some of the dreadfully perfunctory dialogue rears its ugly head and most sane viewers might abandon the ship as we are forced to listen to the nonsensical babble of some twenty somethings who sound a wee bit too stupid to get into a workshop at The Learning Annex, never mind a university.

But then, in no time at all, we're introduced to our leading lady played by Inbar Lavi who, it turns out, is not only drop-dead gorgeous, but seems (in spite of the idiotic lines she's forced to spout) a pretty decent actress. Oh, fuck it. You keep watching. It doesn't take too long before we're introduced to more babes and some hunks (for the ladies and/or gents of the light-in-the-loafer persuasion) and we get a few cheap thrills when two couples (including the ravishing Miss Lavi) sneak into the asylum which, though it's been closed since the 50s, looks pretty well maintained and accoutred with contemporary fixtures.

The movie actually gets even more moronic. The asylum is haunted by a ghost, but there are also a bunch of canisters containing the ashes of long-incinerated inmates. When one of the cans breaks open, some of our characters inhale the ashes and soon become possessed. From here on in we're forced to watch several scary (the word is relative) sequences involving more killings and plenty of things going bump in the night.

Luckily, the movie finds as many opportunities for the ravishing Miss Lavi to wear sexy shorts and even sexier underwear. This is finally the thing that keeps us riveted to the screen. We do have to suffer through a whole mess of scary scenes that aren't really scary and lots more of the aforementioned dumb dialogue, but those looking to suffer through this lame horror movie will be able to glue one's eyes to this scrumptious bit of crumpet known as Inbar Lavi.

If this sounds like your cup of blood, you could do a lot worse than give it a spin.

House of Dust is available on DVD via Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada Ltd (along with their other latest horror release Mr. Jones. Feel free to buy them directly from the Amazon links below, and in so doing, you'll be contributing to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.