The House of the Devil is a 2009 American horror film written, directed, and edited by Ti West, starring Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov, Greta Gerwig, A. J. Bowen, and Dee Wallace.
The plot concerns a young college student who is hired as a babysitter at an isolated house and is soon caught up in bizarre and dangerous events as she fights for her life.
The film combines elements of both the slasher film and haunted house subgenres while using the "satanic panic" of the 1980s as a central plot element. The film pays homage to horror films of the 1970s and 1980s, recreating the style of films of that era using filming techniques and similar technology to what was used then. The film's opening text claims that it is based upon true events, a technique used in some horror films, such as The Amityville Horror and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Plot[]
In the 1980s, college student Samantha Hughes is desperate to pay her rent and sees an ad for a babysitting job. She is initially stood up by the patron, Mr. Ulman, but comes around after talking to him on the phone. She gets a ride to his remote mansion from her best friend, Megan. Ulman reveals he does not have any children but he and his wife have a grown son. The job is to attend to his wife's mother, whom he refers to as "able-bodied". Samantha balks at first, but then agrees to a fee of $400. Megan reluctantly agrees to pick up Samantha at 12:30 a.m.
On the way home, Megan is shot in the head by a stranger. Samantha orders a pizza from a number Mr. Ulman had repeatedly recommended. She listens to her Walkman and dances around the house, accidentally breaking a vase. While cleaning up the mess, she discovers a cupboard containing old family photographs. In one photograph, a family that is not the Ulmans stands next to the Volvo that she and Megan saw at the house. Later, three corpses are shown in one of the rooms, implying that they were the family in the photographs and the true residents of the house.
After she is shaken by noises in the house and the arrival of the pizza she ordered, delivered by the same man who murdered Megan, Samantha dials 911 but tells the operator that it was an accidental call. Drugs in the pizza cause her to pass out just as she observes motion behind a door on the third floor. She comes to during a lunar eclipse and finds herself bound in the center of a Pentagram on the floor. Mr. and Mrs. Ulman, along with Megan's killer, who is their son Victor, begin a ritual. Mother is revealed to be a grotesque, witch-like figure. She slices her arm and pours her blood into a goat skull, using the blood to draw occult symbols on Samantha's stomach and forehead, and then forces Samantha to drink the blood.
Samantha manages to escape by stabbing Mother. After she finds Megan's bloody corpse in the kitchen, she stabs Victor and Mrs. Ulman to death, but horrific images of Mother begin appearing in her mind. Mr. Ulman chases her into a nearby cemetery, where he tells her that she was chosen and that it is her destiny to accept "him". Samantha threatens Ulman with Victor's gun, but Ulman tells her to shoot him, claiming that he is only a messenger and that she is too late. Instead of shooting Ulman, she horrifies him by shooting herself in the head. The scene cuts to a TV news broadcast about the strange lunar eclipse the night before, which confounded scientists due to its abrupt ending.
Samantha is in a hospital bed, her head in bandages. A nurse walks in and pats the unconscious Samantha on the stomach, saying, "You will be just fine. Both of you."