Neil LaBute has been exploring the complex, often disheartening power struggles between men and women for three decades. His early work like In the Company of Men elicited some particularly vehement reactions, with some people calling him a misogynist usually because his male characters were awful, conniving, disgusting human beings. Then the famous playwright made Your Friends and Neighbors, Nurse Betty, and The Shape of Things, proving to everyone that he wasn’t a misogynist — just a misanthrope.
Even that may be too strong of a word for LaBute, who may gleefully dissect the worst impulses of humanity (especially in regard to sex and romance), but arguably isn’t doing anything more cynical or misanthropic than your average storyteller who excavates drama from conflict. Winning Sundance awards and critical acclaim, LaBute stunned everyone in the high-art world when he took a sharp turn into silly genre territory with his infamous remake of The Wicker Man, not to mention his Dracula stage play and fun television series Van Helsing. LaBute is back with a new film, one which seemingly exists at the intersection of his love of horror and his more intellectual films and plays, House of Darkness.
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The Horror Hook-Up in House of Darkness
Saban Films
House of Darkness could certainly be a play, but it’s much too pretty for that. Almost every scene consists of a cleverly gliding, gradually threatening conversation between two and sometimes three people, so the film does tend to feel stagey. On the other hand, LaBute has really mastered his cinematic approach, so the kind of gothic cinematography and lighting he achieves here would be impossible to translate into any other medium. House of Darkness really looks gorgeous, with a gloomy atmosphere that’s a perfect setting for the initially innocuous but somehow suspicious and eventually disturbing dialogue.
The film begins with Hap Jackson (played by a perfectly sleazy Justin Long) and Mina Murray (an ethereal Kate Bosworth) sitting in the front seats of Hap’s car. They had met at a bar that night, and Hap drove her home, not expecting the vast, antiquated mansion that she lives in. They oscillate between flirtation and self-disclosure, divulging tidbits of their personality while they play a game of lust. Mina seems much more direct and honest than Hap, although she remains a mysterious figure, a beautiful apparition who claims to live alone in one of several of her family’s estates.
Maybe it’s illogical that Hap would go into this big, cold, spooky house with a stranger, or that he’d continue to say there despite some creepy warning signs and bad vibes. Then again, it’s hard to say — the lizard brain of lust leads people to do stupid, reckless things. In a way, this is one central thesis of LaBute’s work, which has always featured men and women alike committing atrocious or idiotic acts and being genuinely awful and manipulative because they’re attracted to someone. This isn’t even merely sexual (though it absolutely is for Hap); sometimes it’s simply for power, like with Mina. It’s the repulsive, pathetic thrill of wanting someone to want you, and then discarding them when they do.
Neil LaBute Has Always Made Horror Movies
The sexual politics at play in their conversation is fascinating, and usually very entertaining. Again, it often feels like a stage play with little narrative stakes, but with LaBute’s clever dialogue, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The filmmaker spices things up when he introduces one sister (Lucy, played by a darkly seductive Gia Crovatin) and then another (Nora, played by Lucy Walters with an immediately authoritative dominance), keeping things moving so that the 88-minute runtime never feels like a slog.
Obviously, something’s wrong here, and much of the film might find audiences just waiting for the other shoe to drop, hoping the horror will finally happen. House of Darkness isn’t that film though. It might have a gruesome moment or two with maybe one jump scare thrown in for good measure, but this is hardly a scream-fest. LaBute creates a wonderfully gothic atmosphere reminiscent of classic horror films like The Seventh Victim or Dead of Night, where the mood and subject are horror-adjacent, but the actual content isn’t scary per se.
LaBute may not have always made horror films, but his film have always horrified. Roger Ebert’s four-star review of his first film begins with the line, “Now here is true evil: cold, unblinking, reptilian;” when asked to name a horrifying movie that isn’t necessarily a horror movie, the great genre filmmaker Lucky McKee named LaBute’s In the Company of Men.
That’s why, as odd as it may have seemed, LaBute’s turn toward explicit horror films is perfect. He’s always tapped into the most disturbing innate tendencies of human(un)kind, and horror is generally about these darker aspects of reality. House of Darkness continues the trend, featuring one crummy, lying man trying to sleep with a dangerous woman.
Justin Long and the Great Cast of House of Darkness
Justin Long and Kate Bosworth are both very good here, extremely believable and natural with what is assumedly tightly scripted dialogue. Long has always had a great sense of humor, especially when incorporating it into the dispositions of insufferable jerks, and he does the same here to great effect.
He’s almost convincingly ‘sweet’ as a kind of indie boy dreamboat when he’s trying to win Mina’s affections, but as soon as he’s talking to a friend on the phone or encountering Mina’s equally attractive sister, he reverts to his baser frat-boy instincts. Just as Aaron Eckhart was for LaBute at the beginning of his career, Long is a great stand-in for the sleazeballs of humanity.
Bosworth and Crovatin are phenomenal as well, pretending to be coy ingénues with burgeoning sexuality to seduce Hap, but really playing with him like a cat with a rat. They’re sexy and aloof, and too weirdly confident to not be dangerous. When Lucy Walters shows up as the older sister with the fatigue of an aged feline far less amused about playing with her food, it’s clear that Hap doesn’t stand a chance.
Neil LaBute and the Darkness of Human Nature
Some might view the film as a revenge fantasy, the kind of vicarious wish-fulfillment which satisfies people who would love to see scumbags get punished. Hap is entirely representative of the everyday people who may not be criminally bad, but who are awful enough to wish bad things upon, and the film may indulge that impulse superficially. However, there are no protagonists or antagonists in House of Darkness, and it’s unclear if anyone truly gets what they deserve here as the film nears its gruesome conclusion. Ultimately, everyone is mostly wrong in the end. That’s life, though, isn’t it?
Using the potential hook-up of a one-night-stand, LaBute deconstructs the ways we lie to the people we want to screw, and what these facades say about our inner nature. Three decades ago, they called LaBute a misogynist for work like this; today, the same work of his is embraced by members of the #MeToo community for critiquing toxic masculinity. Neither are probably true; LaBute doesn’t attack women, and he doesn’t attack men. House of Darkness, extremely consistent with his filmography, makes it clear LaBute isn’t picking sides, just shining a light on the darkest thing of all — human nature.
Saban Films will release House of Darkness in theaters on September 9, 2022, and on Demand and Digital on September 13, 2022.
