Horror Movie Review: The Last House on Cemetery Lane (2015)

Don’t be boring. It’s the number one rule of horror. Everything else is subjective but keeping the audience engaged? A no-brainer. Well, it seems as though no-one bothered to tell The Last House on Cemetery Lane. Ignore the flashy front cover, this film has no scares, no tension and no bloody cemetery.

John Davis (Lee Bane) is a horror movie screen writer struggling for inspiration (I’m not sure if that was an in-joke for the writers). He decides to leave London for a while and hopes a quiet and rural village in Wales will help spark his imagination.

Early alarm bells should be ringing for him when the owner of the house he will be staying in informs him of another tenant living on the third floor. He is less then pleased about having to share but she insists that the blind old woman is no trouble, he won’t even notice she is there.

The pace of life in the village is slow and John quite enjoys it. He meets a neighbour named Cassie (Georgina Blackledge) and the pair hit it off. As his relationship grows with her so does is screen-writing inspiration. Everything seems perfect until odd occurrences begin to occur in the house.

Odd, supernatural style occurrences. As John gets more and more freaked out he begins to wonder about the old woman who lives upstairs, who is she and why hasn’t he seen her? You might think that this is where the film gets good but it really doesn’t. These occurrences are few and far between, instead the majority of the film focuses on the relationship of John and Cassie. Just what you want in your horror movie. Three-quarters of it dedicated to a love story.

If you manage to stay awake to witness the big reveal, congratulations… it wasn’t worth it. The slog to get to the payoff isn’t worth it. Simply put The Last House on Cemetery Lane is mind-numbingly boring.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the cinematography is horrid and the low budget is glaringly obvious. The cast seem to be as bored as the viewer with embarrassingly subdued performances, the soundtrack repeats to the point of irritation and it takes itself so seriously. The longer it goes on, you realise that those involved really thought they were making something profound and intellectual here. Wow.

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