Project House Rewatch: House 4 – The Repossession

House 4 – The Repossession

Or so that’s why they stopped here.

First, Roger Cobb is back!

William Katt’s back in the role with awesome hair.

But I’m confused because he promised his dad he’d not sell this house, but in the first movie he’d spent most of his childhood living with his aunt. That’s not even the biggest inconsistency. He has a new family here. No mention of the kid that went missing in the original.

All that excitement over Roger is short lived, because there’s a car accident, and, well, Roger doesn’t make it.

His Wife and daughter live in the house. His step brother wants to buy the house for reasons I’ll get to soon.

At least this House movie has a house that engages with the protagonist, as it seems to be driving her crazy. The trouble is, we get too many dream sequences.

At the 49 minute-mark, Laurel, the daughter is taken, and I thought we might have an echo from the first movie, but that’s yet another dream.

There’s a singing pizza delivery boy at one point.

He delivers this pizza with a face in it.

At some point, someone decided the movie needed to go somewhere, so back to the step-brother with reasons. He wants to buy the house because he has a shady deal with some mobsters to dump toxic waste. But under the house is an ancient Indigenous American spring, which is why Roger had to look after the house in the first place.

Something about this element with the mobsters made be think of Troma movies, which is okay if you want to watch a Troma movie.

The step brother sends goons to try to scare the girl. There’s a fire. The house is burning. The ancient spring erupts.

It’s very dramatic.

There’s also a character in it called Verma Clump. She seems quite pointless until the end, where she calls the step-brother a schmuck, which is always a bonus.

I didn’t enjoy this one much at all. At some point during the production, they must have realised it was trash? The lack of direction, the general confusion of the story pretty much sums up the series as a whole. It’s inconsistent, and there’s no element holding it all together.

There are elements all films share. Visions or dreams. A focus on the house. Invaders of some sort into the house. But each is too disconnected from the next to really consider them a series.

Certainly, the first three had no reason to be linked at all, and may have done better as separate movies. The fourth seems like an attempt to connect with the original, but it fails badly.

It’s a shame the Project House Rewatch ended on such a sour note, but House 4 is a poor film.