46. House at the End of the Street

Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) and her mother Sarah (Elisabeth Shue) move to small rural town where they rent a house next door to a murder site.  Years earlier, a young girl murdered her parents in the house.  They say she drowned but they never found her body so urban legend has it that she is living in the woods.  At a block party or some sort of neighborhood gathering, Elissa meets Tyler (Nolan Gerard Funk) who invites her to join his save the planet (or something cheesey like that) after school group.  Really its just a giant party where everyone is getting wasted.  Typical high school.  He tries to get with her but she manages to fight him off.  Distraught she leaves the party and starts the long walk home.  Cue the stranger to pick her up.

At first she takes her mother's advice and does not get in the care, but once it starts raining she excepts the ride.  The stranger is Ryan (Max Thieriot) who lives next door in the murder house.  In fact it was his family that was murdered there and now he works at fixing up the house while going to community college.  Elissa feels for this depressingly sweet neighbor boy.  The next day she takes over a CD for him and the two start to get to know each other a little bit better.  But not well enough to know about his sister being alive and well and living in a room in the basement desperate to get out and cause chaos.  As they continue to get closer, the townspeople seem to hate Ryan more, plus it's getting more difficult for him to keep an eye on his sister.

I don't want to give away the ending, but I may just do so in this paragraph.  You've been warn.  Although the film had a look and feel of being one of those classic grainy B movies, there seem to be something lacking.  Maybe it was the lack of chemistry between the two main characters or possibly that I don't buy a skinny little guy would be capable of breaking someone's foot with just his hands.  They did have a couple of good scare moments.  The one that comes to mind is when the lights go out in the basement and the flashlight keeps turning on and off.  However, and this could be because I'm a nerd, I thought the story was kind of predictable.  It's a remake you say?  Well guess what I've never seen the original and I still new what was going to happen.  They also seemed to have elements of the story that seemed unnecessary because they didn't go into it.  Why do we need to see his parents taking drugs?  He never mentioned it to her.  I'm not even sure he was old enough to know what was going on?  Seemed pointless.

Rating: **

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w16stVhviHc