[HorrorScience] The Deep House – The House of the Deep (2023)

The haunted house subgenre is one of the most classic and prolific within horror, so it is very easy to find entire sagas dedicated to that theme, such as Evil Dead,House,Amityville, House on the Haunted Hill, as well as a huge number of individual films that touch on the topic in one way or another (Besokarna,The Shining,Poltergeist).

 The haunted house theme is so popular that even within children's entertainment it is very common (there we haveBeetlejuice, Monster Houseor the moviecasperof the 90s). This is understandable, because an old mansion (or any abandoned construction) can bring out anyone's worst fears just with its presence (there you have the mythical scene ofPsychosiswhere you can see the silhouette of Norman's mother looking at him from the window), but it can also be used as something fun full of craziness (like the mansion in theAddams Family).

Doing something original with a haunted house is very difficult, but I recently found out about the existence of the filmThe Deep House(The house of the depths), where the action is transferred to a haunted house that is submerged at the bottom of a lake, something that I at least had not seen before, so I had to give it a try.

The film begins by showing us a young couple (Ben and Tina) who go to abandoned places to explore them while recording and thus gain fame and money.

Seeing that the last video has not had the expected impact, Ben decides to go one step further and manages to find a small town in France where there is an entire town submerged in a lake. When they arrive at the place they find that it is a vacation area, so there is no secret place to take a good video. However, Pierre, a resident of the town, tells them that there is another lake nearby.where there are intact houses that were also submergeds and offers to guide them.

After arriving at the site, Ben and Tina go down to the sea accompanied by their inseparable drone, with which they record everything that happens. The submerged house is completely closed, but they quickly find a window to sneak through. Once they go deeper into the rooms of the house,They start to see really strange things,such as objects that have not been corrupted by water, photos of children nailed to the wall or even a door with marks from the hands of someone who must have been locked there.

Once they reach the deepest part of the house, strange situations begin to occur.. The drone starts to malfunction, there are strange shadows and things start to move. But the best is yet to come, because upon entering the kitchen they realize that atrocities were committed in that house in the past and it is from there that they both fear for their lives.

The house of the depths(The Deep House) has a very original theme, that is undoubtedly, soWe are facing a promising beginning(as well as an incredible challenge for the recording team).

The cast of the film is very limited, since there are actually only two protagonists and the rest of the characters are punctual. This is something I usually like because it simplifies the plot, avoids heavy characters, and can help improve the pace of the film. I have recently commented on a couple of films of this style such asFall(2022)eitherBackcountry(2014).

Unfortunately, (and as happened inBackcountry)The protagonists are not particularly memorable,since Ben is the typical character who gets so excited about things that he doesn't have the slightest bit of sense when it comes to getting into dangerous situations. For her part, Tina is the character who blindly follows the other, doing things she doesn't want to do. The character of Pierre is, obviously, another cliché, the “suspicious” guy who takes the couple to a specific place that no one knows and you are not sure if he is going to do something bad or not.

As far as the house is concerned,The interesting underwater approach is one of the most unoriginal things we will see,Well, we find many typical situations in these movies (including being scared by a doll or a door opening). In fact, I would go so far as to say that,During the first 30 minutes inside the house, the film abuses the resource of giving scareswith things that are nothing (but that startle, when the music suddenly turns up and one of the characters screams). And that is not necessary, wellThe setting of the house is gloomy enough to give a disturbing atmosphere.

The fact that the house is underwater (therefore, in the dark), makes itwe do not see clearly what is there, so that the protagonists' flashlights and the drone's flashlights will teach us. This is used quite successfully throughout most of the footage, but I admit that on more than one occasion I have not been able to see what I was supposed to see. Come on, when the movie increases its pace, sometimes you don't realize what it wants to show.

And since I'm talking about pace, for a short film (less than an hour and a half),can become heavybecause it has very slow parts, although it is true that the final part is much more accelerated in every way.

Tras verThe Deep House, me doy cuenta de queno solo está llena de tópicos(incluso la escena post-créditos es lo esperable dentro del género), sino que incluso pasa de ser “realista” a incluir todas las fantasías posibles, no solo para dar sustos al espectador (un recurso aceptable), sino también para explicar lo que sucede en la casa (lo cual se ve forzado, absurdo y hasta ridículo).

No obstante, hay que reconocerle que, pese a sus defectos,la película ofrece mal gusto y sustos en más de un sentido. Primero, los sustos puntuales, luego, la ambientación lúgubre de la casa y, finalmente, los elementos sobrenaturales del final de la película. En ese sentido creo que cumple sobradamente, pero por algún motivo me esperaba algo más (o tal vez mejor).

Curiosidades de The Deep House

• Los escenarios que recrean la casa estaban en una enorme piscina, pero debían ser usados por partes (para facilitar el rodaje) y ser extraídos de esta al terminar las tomas para evitar que se estropeasen.
• En la casa puede leerse (en francés) la frase de H.P. “No está muerto lo que eternamente yace, y en los eones por venir la muerte aun puede morir”