tek's rating: meh and three quarters

House at the End of the Street (PG-13)
Dread Central (Blu-ray/DVD); FilmNation; IMDb; Relativity; Rotten Tomatoes; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; iTunes; Max; Vudu; YouTube

This came out in 2012, but I didn't see it until 2022. It has a couple of halfway decent plot twists, which I won't spoil, but it's otherwise somewhat uninspired.

It begins with a couple being murdered by their 13-year-old daughter, Carrie Anne Jacobson. Four years later, Dr. Sarah Cassidy (Elisabeth Shue) moves to a new town with her 17-year-old daughter, Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence). Their new house is situated in a wooded area next door to the house where the Jacobsons had been killed. They thought the house was empty, but it turns out the Jacobsons' now college-age son, Ryan (Max Thieriot) is living there. Eventually, Elissa befriends Ryan, who seems like a nice guy, though the locals treat him like a freak just because his parents had been murdered (and I guess because he's kind of a loner). Because, you know, people suck. Meanwhile, Sarah befriends a police officer named Bill Weaver (Gil Bellows). She's concerned about Elissa spending time with Ryan, presumably because she doesn't want an adult getting romantically involved with her teenage daughter. Oh, and there's a sort of urban legend that Carrie Anne is still living in the woods nearby, because she was never found after she killed her parents.

Beyond that, I don't really know what to tell you without spoiling anything. I didn't feel like the movie was a complete waste of my time (or the buck 25 it cost at a dollar store), but I also don't feel like I would have missed anything if I'd never seen it.


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