Stylish Horror Revived in House of the Devil

Babysitter-in-danger flick House of the Devil does a delicious job of reproducing the atmosphere of classic horror flicks from the '80s, say critics, and its slow-burn tension is a refreshing change from splatter-fests like Saw.

• Director Ti West has "crafted a film that beautifully reproduces the look and texture of a straight-to-video horror from the ’80s, and filled it with the sort of nail-biting tension that works in any decade," writes Anton Bitel at Little White Lies.

• It's "an old-school tension builder," writes Scott Collura at IGN, "slowly ratcheting up the anxieties of the audience who, of course, is fully aware that something bad is going to happen."
• This "crisp, economical, satisfying little horror pic reclaims the pleasures of the kind of old-school formula that the jokey Scream franchise deconstructed into satire," Lisa Schwarzbaum writes at Entertainment Weekly.

(More horror movies stories.)