House in Massillon...

Ok. So I went to see House while I was in Canton, Ohio, for EFM Board meetings. It was showing in nearby Massillon. The joke running around our board before I took off was, “Hey! You want to go with Mike to an R-rated Christian horror movie?” Pretty funny, huh? The film was based on a novel by Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker, two of my favorite authors. That’s why I was dying to see it.

I talked three others into going with me. We headed out around 8:50pm. Would’ve been plenty of time, if I hadn’t gotten lost once. Streets in Ohio are not straight east and west or north and south like in Kansas, so I got a bit turned around. We stopped at Walgreens, got our bearings from a friendly clerk and made it to the theater – Massillon Great Escape 12 – just a few minutes late. We paid for our tickets and walked in during the final two previews. Perfect!

The movie began with an odd scene that I don’t remember from the beginning of the book, kind of a back story it seemed. I suppose the added it or moved it to the start to get intense really quickly. It was effective.

After the opening scene’s darkness and death, House settled down for a minute or two – a couple arguing with each other while lost in the backwoods of rural Alabama. We knew it was Alabama because of the map the guy was trying to read while driving. The woman was a less than famous country singer. Her husband didn’t appreciate her music much. Turned off her CD the second she started it.

So they encounter a weird police officer and a weirder accident on the highway the puts them on the road to the house for which the movie’s named. Some nasty metal objects have fallen off a truck on the dusty “shortcut” they take to make it to Montgomery on time and they end up with two flats and no cell signal. Imagine that. Must be a horror flick.

They walk up the road in the rain – a thunderstorm of course – and find this creepy bed and breakfast all lit up, welcoming them. The lobby is empty when they enter, but another couple’s names are on the guest register. They meet them soon enough as they descend the staircase from the second floor. No one knows where the B&B’s proprietors are. It’s hard to find good service in an R-rated Christian horror movie, you know.

A while later, after a short electrical blackout, the owners show up. Creepy folks they are – Betty, Stewart and Pete. The kind of folks you meet in a thunderstorm on a back road in the middle of nowhere if you’re cast in a thriller.

Soon things get really intense. The arguing couple whose accident the audience witnessed try to make a phone call from the desk phone. No dial tone. They try to leave the house. Big guy with a shotgun standing in the yard. Lots of screams and looks of horror. This is a horror movie after all.

Stuff gets really wacky after this. The gunman climbs on the roof and stomps around, scaring everyone silly. The sends a message written on a tin can down the chimney to the people he’s trapped inside. “Give me one dead body by sunrise and I’ll let the rest live.” Not the most comforting words.

So then we follow everyone as they fight with the creepy host and hostess and in separate rooms live through traumatic events from their past like their real and happening again. Jack, the guy from the original accident, in his wanderings through the house finds a young girl. Her name is Susan. She looks a bit scary, dark circles ring her eyes, but she’s friendly enough. She helps Jack and Stephanie – that’s the country singer’s name – in the end to destroy the shotgun-toting Tin Man. She tells them that light will destroy him.

I won’t ruin the ending by telling you more about the final show down or the fate of the two couples, but I have to tell you it was a good redemption story. Better than I expected from Hollywood. The movie did justice to the book. Glad I was in Canton to see it since it didn’t open at home.

After the show was over, Matt, one of the guys who went with me, said, “So that’s what an R-rated Christian horror movie’s like.” We laughed. We talked a little about the storyline on the way back to the hotel, but only a little. Chelsea said her favorite part was at the end. “That was the only good part,” was the joke. I laughed too. There weren’t many happy moments.

We didn’t get lost on the way back. No Walgreens stop. I arrived back in my room around 11:00pm and fell promptly to sleep. No bad dreams. Just a little sleepy in the morning.

And that’s it. Go see the movie…or better READ THE BOOK!