There are not a lot of happy times ahead for everyone in THE HAPPY HOUSE
THE HAPPY HOUSE (D. W. Young, 2012)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, May 3
212-924-3363
www.happyhousefilm.com
www.cinemavillage.com
Billed as a horror-comedy, The Happy House is, unfortunately, neither scary nor funny. The debut feature by Brooklyn-based writer-director D. W. Young (A Hole in the Fence) follows a young couple trying to inject something positive into their rocky marriage. Joe (Khan Baykal) hopes that a weekend at an isolated country B&B will bring them closer together, but Wendy (Aya Cash) hates the idea, repeatedly expressing her hatred for those kinds of places. Weirdness ensues upon their arrival at the Happy House, where the weird owner, Hildie (Marceline Hugot), gives them a bizarre set of rules and bakes amazing blueberry muffins that contain an extremely secret ingredient; her weird oaf of a son, Skip (Mike Houston), seems to go everywhere carrying an ax he can’t wait to put to use; and fellow guest and Swedish lepidopterist Hverven (Oliver Henzler) is just downright weird and creepy. When Hverven disappears after getting strike three for breaking Hildie’s rules, Wendy wants to get the hell out of there, as the last time she saw the butterfly man he was being followed into the woods by an ax-carrying Skip. But soon Deputy Marvin (Curtis Shumaker) shows up to tell everyone that an escaped serial killer (Charles Borland) is on the loose and they should all stay locked up inside, which of course turns out to be a very bad idea. The lone saving grace of The Happy House is Cash’s performance, which deserves to be in a better film. Shot in a real B&B on a very low budget, the eighty-minute flick otherwise features bland acting, and Young’s attempts to play with genre conventions fail time and times again, particularly in long scenes in near-total darkness that make you wonder whether they were trying to keep the electricity bill down. The Happy House is about one weekend getaway that is not worth leaving home for. The film opens May 3 at Cinema Village, with Young and various cast members participating in Q&As after the 7:00 shows on Friday and Saturday.