Under the Radar Horror: GirlHouse Review
In our “Hidden Horrors” section, we review horror films that, for various reasons, didn’t make it to the big screen.
Kylie (Ali Cobrin) is a charming college student facing a tough time. Her father passed away, and now Kylie desperately needs money. She gets an offer to earn it through internet porn – becoming one of the participants in the online project GirlHouse and moving into a house where several curvy beauties live under constant camera surveillance. The owner of this enterprise takes unprecedented security measures to keep the house’s location a secret. However, when the girls offend the ego of a psychopathic computer geek, he calculates its coordinates and comes for a showdown. Two students who have been following the project online try to stop the maniac, but time is running out.
“GirlHouse” has roots in the “B-movie” slashers of the 70s and 80s but attempts to update their concept for the new digital age. The result is lively but not very convincing – and there are so many questions about the film that you don’t even have time to formulate them. What kind of webcam porn project can afford a full-fledged control center, security, and a mansion with such amenities for its residents? Judging by the number of online users writing to the girls, its audience is unlikely to spend enough money communicating with them to cover all of this! Especially considering that the girls don’t show anything that couldn’t be seen on other similar services. And in general, what kind of super-mega-encryption is it if it is hacked in one night by two random people – who are by no means extra-class hackers?
However, these blunders and oversights can be attributed to the usual genre conventions, which slashers assume a lot – after all, you can’t immediately recall horror films without such plot stretches. Moreover, in its second half, “GirlHouse” cleverly distracts from the search for plot holes – the maniac here is outwardly and “psychologically” little different from hundreds of his screen colleagues, but he demonstrates amazing speed and rage for his physique, moving through floors and rooms like a bloodthirsty Tasmanian devil from Looney Tunes cartoons.
Is it worth watching?
Are enough beautiful girls of varying degrees of nudity (Ali Cobrin hides from the camera, but the other actresses are not so shy) and brutal on-screen killings enough to recommend “GirlHouse” for viewing? Perhaps, yes, especially since the film demonstrates a juicy picture, surprisingly decent acting, worthy makeup, and very good dynamics – the director maintains an excellent pace, not allowing a minute of sagging. The picture does not reach the level of revelation, but the attitude to what you see is easy to check by imagining that “GirlHouse” has turned into a full-fledged horror franchise. We, for example, this thought does not cause any internal discomfort – moreover, it would be nice to send the local maniac to some “House 2”. As Carlson said, that’s when we’ll laugh!