Christina's House (2000)

Must See Movie...

good film but with many flaws

Good concept, poorly executed.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

this is a pretty good movie,all things considered.it has its moments of suspense and tension,and there are a few possible suspects for the psycho,at least in the first half or so.the acting is fairly decent,and the writing is fair.i will say that i found that sometimes the build up to some scenes is a bit too drawn out.and the ending is a bit too ambiguous for me.however,having Jerry Wasserman as the creepy town sheriff is a stroke of casting genius.you never really know what's going on in his mind,and whether he's a good guy or a bad guy,at least until near the end of the movie.he steals every scene he's in.John Savage is also good as the creepy father.when you add everything up,this movie is certainly watchable and more than that at times.for me,"Christina's House" is a 7/10

This wasn't really a bad movie, but it wasn't really a good one either. I think what concerned me more was that the father's behaviour was sort of ignored once we realised there was a killer in the house. He was still a bit of a suss individual!Anyway, I digress.I thought Christina did quite a good job, and Howie was good until he seemed to turn into an extra from House of the Dead at the end. The guy who played the Policeman seemed a bit too angry too easily and I'm not sure I'd want him on my local force. I'd like to see one of these movies where the bad guy doesn't appear to have super strength and 9 lives. The one good bit was when we realised why the windows were being weather-proofed, I think I even let out an "ahhh"....so points for that.I must start writing these reviews without spoilers...yeah, starting from the next one I'll do that :)

I don't write comments on most the movies since most of the comments from other users have justified the movie. But this one, most people just assumed that this is another "wannabe" horror flick (and at the time of this writing, users have given this movie average weight of around 3). In reality, it is far from it. I would say, it is above average.The movie is a little slow. All I can say without spoiling is that, the real twist is in the end. Trust me.There are no "big" actors in this movie and that doesn't make this movie a b-flick.8/10

I bet that the excellent marketing that promoted the UK cover of Christina's House fooled many unsuspecting ‘victims' into parting with the wonga to rent it. The front Boldly boasts that it's ‘from the hit-making writers of Poltergeist', backed with a quote from Videoworld, ‘Fantastic! – It will scare the hell out of you'. Flip to the reverse and we're informed that star, Brad Rowe is the new Brad Pitt or Leonardo Di Caprio and underneath we learn that this is a ‘must see Box Office smash'. But the real Hyperbole came from the ingenious warning box, which states that we should be prepared for the most terrifying 92 minutes of our lives! Blimey, could this be the new exorcist? Credit has to be given to the buffs over at Xscapade video; I don't think I've ever seen so much brouhaha. They'd make 3000 miles to Graceland look like Citizen Kane if they had the chance! The box-art had me believe that this was some kind of creepy Amityville spin-off, involving a spooky haunted house and plenty of spiritualism. But the truth is, it's just a lamer than lame Scream wannabe that's about as ‘terrifying' as Big Bird from Sesame Street! Unsurprisingly it's about a girl called Christina that lives in a house. Only joking, it starts with a young cookie sales-girl getting shaken to death by an unseen assailant outside the abode. How he actually broke her neck by wiggling her hips was somewhat questionable, it makes you wonder how people survived ‘twisting' in the early sixties, doesn't it? He wraps the corpse up in a rug and the shot fades. We then get to meet the teen of the title (Allison Lange) and her younger brother Bobby (Lorne Stewart). They live in the house with their creepy father (John Savage) and a weirdo handy man, Howie (Brad Rowe). Any chance of originality is abolished when we learn that she is not yet ready to go all the way with her over-jealous boyfriend, Eddie (Brendan Fehr). Christina is very uneasy in her home because she keeps hearing strange sounds and objects keep mysteriously moving about. It doesn't help that her father seems a little too touchy-feely, which is perhaps something that the local childcare should have taken a good look at! Their mother doesn't live with the bunch, because she's locked up in a loony bin. (I knew that an asylum would pop up in there somewhere.) Maybe the reason she's mad is because she was extremely un-loved by her family? Throughout the runtime her daughter only visits her once and even then, she runs off and leaves without so much as a kiss and cuddle! Before long the obvious happens, people start getting offed by a manaic in predictable and watered down ways. But who's the killer? The only thing that's worse than an overlong movie - is a boring overlong movie, which just about sums up Christina's House. It's more like a poorly acted teen drama than a horror flick, with the scares amounting to a sandwich mysteriously appearing in the kitchen or the whereabouts of Chris' journal. Truly terrifying! Brad Pitt, sorry, Brad Rowe was about the best performer on offer, but I really don't think that Mr. Anniston himself has got to watch his back just yet, despite the confident praise that Rowe has been awarded on the back of the box. (You should've seen what they said about Lange!) I really couldn't for the life of me work out why this was certificated as an eighteen. You're likely to find more gore in an episode of Colombo than anywhere in this bone-dry slasher. All the murders are committed off screen, just accompanied by a ‘crack' and there's not a lot of nudity either, I think that Lange flashed her breasts once or twice, but there's no actual fornication. Everyone's played to look mentally deranged, in an attempt to make the most of the mystery. But it's constructed so poorly that you'll guess who's the psycho half way through anyway. Gavin Wilding – who was also behind The Wisher - has no idea how to build pace and most of the runtime moves painfully s.l.o.w.l.y. So much so, that I had a job to watch it to the end without falling into a catatonic state of depression. To be fair, the conclusion had an interesting twist, but again, it was so sloppily handled that I bet Stuart Allison was as distressed as we were when he saw what the director had made with his screenplay! The rest of the plot made little sense too, like how the hell did the killer manage to turn Christina's house into a prison with unbreakable windows and unlockable doors, without any of the family noticing? Where did he get the money to do such a thing? And the Sheriff was so deplorably inept that he ignores plenty of blatant signs that something's not quite right inside the property that he's meant to be watching. He even questions a hammer that's thrown through a window so that it lands directly in front of him! The characters are all under developed and we never even find out the reason why the mother was in a madhouse in the first place. The killer's motivation was also left up to our imagination. At the end we learn that he was insane (obviously), but we're left to work out our own ideas for the conclusion. Christina's House is a movie without one redeeming feature. It's predictable, lame and sloppy rubbish. It's not even really much of a horror flick. In fact, I'm not really sure what it can be classed as. It isn't interesting enough to be a drama and there are not enough murders to make it a worthwhile stalker. All you have to know is that it's bad and doesn't deserve any of your time. It is Perhaps the most diluted slasher to be released in the past twenty years. This house should be boarded up and abandoned...