Christina's House
directed by Gavin Wilding
directed by Gavin Wilding
This thriller movie started out with a few good ideas but quickly went south. As is usual for the genre the movie featured some gratuitous female toplessness but as the female in question was supposed to be in high school the movie felt sleazier and more disturbing than it needed to be.
It's strange that there are so many thriller or horror movies featuring high schoolers depicted by actors/actresses who are past college age. That probably says something about other social issues but I'm not going down that path in this review.
This movie was made in 2000 but had a very eighties vibe, which I thought was the only good thing about it. The plot or acting certainly weren't strong points.
The Tarling Family , father James (John Savage), daughter Christina (Allison Lange), and younger son Bobby (Lorne Stewart) has moved to a rental house on the outskirts of town. I think it's because the family can be closer to the mother/wife Joanne (Chilton Crane) who has gone completely bonkers and is locked up in an insane asylum.
The house is old and has weird sounds. James says it's just settling. Christina's not so sure. Christina worries that she's, like her mother, losing her mind. Christina has nightmares. Christina swears that items have been moved from where she last put them. Christina thinks someone in the house is watching her.
One man who is always watching her, and not in a good way, is her father James. Christina is long past the point where it's ok to be in a state of undress around her father or brother for that matter. James has a disturbing habit of opening doors without knocking first.
Christina's boyfriend Eddy Duncan (Brendan Fuhr) thinks he and Christina need to do THAT thing to prove their love to each other. Christina's not so sure. Christina's brother Bobby teases Eddy by saying that he (Bobby) has seen more of Christina's a$$ than Eddy ever will. Yup. Cause that's like not a weird thing for a brother(!!!) to say at all. Christina might be more interested in the shy new young handyman Howie (Brad Rowe) anyway.
When an apparent murder occurs, the Tarlings come under suspicion from the choleric local sheriff (Jerry Wasserman). Christina must discover which of the men around her are guilty. Or did she do it? Or did the house do it? The movie tries to be coy on whether the supernatural is involved but the acting is so bad that you might lose interest. I don't think all of the actors realized they were in the same film.
