New to market! Lousy horror film won't last long!

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ALLIANCE Mom! Can�t we please go back to Bad Dad? Please?: Jennifer Lawrence doesn�t appear to be thrilled with her new accommodations.

Location, location, location.

It's a simple real estate truism, but you'd be surprised how many characters in horror movies just don't get it. They buy the old mansion that the locals insist is haunted, or grab that fixer-upper where a family of 12 was wiped out by an axe murderer, and then are surprised when blood starts leaking out of the walls.

Of course, these are also the people who say things like "I'll be right back" or think nothing of going down to the basement to check that funny noise, so it couldn't have been much of a stretch for Mr. Realtor to unload the old Manson Place on them. He saw them coming.

The dupes in The House At The End of The Street are Sarah (Elizabeth Shue), a single mom, and Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence), her teenage daughter. Both of them are refugees of a bad marriage to a rock musician -- a setup that sounds considerably more interesting, and terrifying, than this one -- who rent a huge house somewhere out in the woods of Pennsylvania, or, to put it another way, exactly where two attractive single women should not be. You can just imagine the ad: "Forest view, mediocre schools nearby, just steps from site of unexplained slaughter."

Because out of their window, Sarah and Eilssa can see the Jacobson place where, just a few years back, an unhinged teenager named Carrie Anne (Eva Link) beat her parents to death. It's still the talk of the neighbourhood. Mostly, it turns out, because the event is thought to have lowered property values. It also seems worth mentioning that Carrie Anne is thought to have drowned, but her body was (gulp!) never found.

"The double murder was kind of a drag on the real estate market," Sarah acknowledges with the happy air of someone who managed to grab a bargain. Hey Sarah, what's that funny noise in the basement?

There's also the matter of Ryan (Max Theriot), Carrie Anne's brother, who returned home after the murders and lives alone -- or does he? -- as a combination of recluse, sensitive victim and prospective boyfriend. If The House at the End of the Street was something by Hitchcock, which it transparently wants to be, Ryan would be the Anthony Perkins character: the genial loner with something to hide.

There's a major-league twist in all this that is meant to lift the movie beyond its genre roots, but unfortunately it's not that difficult to guess what's going on in David Loucka's screenplay, at least not if you understand the film's inspirations. In any event, it takes its sweet time getting there, stopping off to play with one of those high school romances between the new girl and the outsider. It unfolds in a cavalcade of horror-movie tropes -- the bullies at school, the working mom who's never home, a police officer's flashlight that stops working at exactly the wrong moment.

None of this is very frightening or suspenseful. Director Mark Tonderai (Hush) tries to spook us with close-ups of Sarah and Elissa assuring each other everything's going to be fine, or by tilting the camera to underline a flashback that's supposed to be unsettling but alas, we remain stubbornly settled. There simply doesn't seem to be much to be afraid of: Carrie Anne is no Carrie, and Tonderai is no Hitchcock.

If The House at the End of The Street has any value, it's in reaffirming the position of Jennifer Lawrence as a rising star. She's not called on to do much -- the film has only a taste of the grit of Winter's Bone or the resourcefulness of The Hunger Games -- but she acquits herself believably in the thankless role of the girlfriend. She's like the expensive house on a street of handyman specials.

-- Postmedia News

The House at the End of the Street

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Elizabeth Shue

Directed by: Mark Tonderai

Grant Park, Polo Park, Kildonan Place, st. Vital Towne

Running time: 101 minutes

Rating: 21/2 stars out of 5

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 21, 2012 D5