Only the Devil Can Get You Out

 

Hey, hey, Horror Nuts! Welcome to another edition of WTFHM!

As I understand it, the housing market has been crazy lately.  Like, finding a house to live in at a good price is quite a task. Why, one might be tempted to buy a house with some questionable history if they were desperate enough.

I'm saying, bleeding walls and portals to Hell aren't everyone's jam. If you're into that sort of thing, you should probably at least be experienced in demonic shit before you make any commitments.

Case in point: This week's movie!

The Cellar starring Elisha Cuthbert, Eoin Macken, Dylan Fitzmaurice Brady, Abby Fitz, and Aaron Monaghan

So...super short synop:

Once upon a time, the worst parents in the world buy an old creepy house at an auction. On their first night there, the parents go to work and leave the kids in the house by themselves. Daughter(Fitz) promptly falls into another dimension in the cellar.

Mom(Cuthbert) spends the remaining hour of this movie trying to figure out where her daughter went and how that relates to all the weird shit in the house. You know, like math equations.

She talks to a lot of people who basically tell her what she already knows and eventually gets chased by a demon and ends up in a creepy Hell dimension herself, along with her family.

The end.

Basically, yeah. 

I feel like this movie just pissed all over the whole mathematical horror sub-subgenre (assuming that is a thing). You see, what, I guess, summons the demons that eventually take the family to hell is a math equation that's carved into the basement and also, plays on a victrola.

They never really address the victrola either. It's just kind of there until the plot needs a little more tension and someone plays the record on it. See, because, just like in Evil Dead when someone says cursed math problems out loud, it summons demons.

And it's not like I didn't try with this movie!

Look, I ignored the fact that every time Elisha Cuthbert came within five feet of an Irish person, her accent changed. I also ignored the fact that Abbie Fitz couldn't decide which accent to use. I EVEN ignored the fact that every lead that our protag found basically did nothing but confirm what she already knew.

What I can't handle is giving us a math problem and not telling us WHY it's a portal to hell. I mean, there was a hamfisted attempt at it, but we never really understand the connection. At a certain point, mom goes to see a professor at a college who is, what I imagine, Doc Brown from Back to the Future must have been like when he was young.

And that was a storyline and a half, lemme tell you. Apparently, this professor, Dr. Fournet(Monaghan) was just an average dude until he was in a car accident and now he's a math genius because that's how brains work???

This is the sort of thing that doesn't really bother me except when it would actually add to the plot if we knew. This filmmaker went through all the effort to create an entirely unnecessary character just to tell us, "Yeah. It's a math portal to hell."

Honestly, the best part of the movie was the last thirty minutes. We get to see a giant demon, which was neat. And the concept of hell being stuck in a big DMV line while counting was kind of inventive.

But really it felt like this plot was built like a house that was made rooms first and then walls. But then the walls are made of sand. And it rains.

Big ole Bronx Cheer for this movie.

Next week! The Twin or maybe something else. We'll see how I'm feeling next week!

See you next week!

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