I watched "The House of the Devil" the other night, and liked it well enough. An indie horror flick, very self-consciously crafted to appear to have been shot in, say, the mid-80s, with the simplest of touches -- characters' hairstyles, the mom jeans, the rotary dial telephones, the big Walkman -- and it looks very much like it could've been a movie of that time.
It delivered some good atmosphere and some startling moments, although I felt that too much time was spent creating the mood and when things get out of hand, they get out of hand almost too quickly for it to really work properly, in terms of pacing, like going from too little to too much all at once.
Also, the meta-factoid at the beginning basically throws any proper suspense out the window -- not having context for what was happening might've made it work better on the face of things.
As an exercise in cinematic style (e.g., simulating an 80s horror movie), they definitely hit all the marks properly. As a horror movie itself, I don't know if it'll qualify as a classic of the genre.
I don't know if this was deliberate on the part of the director or not, but there's a lot of eating in the movie -- it kind of draws attention to itself, like business for the characters to do. It becomes a little distracting, all the nibbling that goes on. Maybe they wanted the characters to have more to do than just, say, smoke (which some of them do, too). Not sure. But it was a little distracting for me.
Also, the overall conceit of the story was less than I'd hoped for, and the payoff didn't quite deliver for me. Like they ended at both a good and a bad point, saying more by showing less, but also kind of copping out (just because of the rushed elements of horror in it making the payoff feel perhaps a bit contrived).
Greta Gerwig (one of my indie film crushes, right up there with Parker Posey) is in it, in a small role as the protagonist's friend.
