Movie Review: The Bleeding House (2011)

First of all, that's a terrible name for a film. Terrible. The literalist in me immediately imagined a house with blood pouring out of the window panes and door jams. After maybe an accident of some sort. A papercut, perhaps. Or a gift-wrapping incident. The Bleeding House? C'mon...

But there I was last night, perusing the horror genre on Netflix Instant, and the cover art for this one jumped out at me.  Very simple. Red, black and white. Kinda creepy.  I almost didn't even need to read the summary of the film to check it out, but I did. And I still went ahead. And I'm glad I did.

Imagine this: You are at home with your highly dysfunctional family in the middle of Nowhere, Ohio. Nighttime in Autumn is rapidly approaching. Suddenly a man knocks on your door dressed in a white linen suit and white fedora.  The kind of outfit you would expect to see in a Tennessee Williams play. Oh, and he's carrying a beat-up old doctor's bag.  You know, the kind of beat-up old doctor's bag that you would expect to see that character from that Tennessee Williams play carry. Oh, and he's being not-so-vaguely religiously creepy.  He's got car trouble down the road, and the mechanic can't come until the morning.  He's asking to be put up for the night.

Do you let him in?

OF COURSE YOU DON'T!!  He's a creepy, religious dude in a white linen suit carrying a beat-up old doctor's bag!  There's about a dozen reasons NOT to let him in the house at that point. 

Guess what Mom and Dad of the dysfunctional family decide to do? Yup. And wacky hijinks ensue. And he goes on to say things like "I cut people" when they ask him what he does for a living. Followed by an explanation that he's a surgeon and some nervous laughter, all around.  But at this point in the evening, I'm gonna start watching my ass around this guy.

It's a very simple film from there on. White Linen Suit, of course, is a bad guy, and he's gonna do bad things.  But there is a twist with this family.  Did I mention that they were dysfunctional? But that word doesn't begin to scratch the surface. And I don't mean that the twist is a great cinematic twist. It's not. You'll know what is going on with the family pretty much right away.  But the way that it plays out is pretty interesting.

It's sparse and simple, but that's the way I like my horror movies sometimes.  The best part of the film is the performance of Patrick Breen as White Linen Suit.  He's both subtle and over-the-top at the same time as the villain. A really great turn by a really great character actor.

It's not a perfect film. Horror rarely achieves that level.  But it was a nice, little movie. And by "nice" I really mean "vicious as all hell".  And that's what I was in the mood for last night.  So take this review with that particular grain of salt.

My Netflix Rating: 4 out of 5 stars