House at the End of the Street

Some girl (Jennifer Lawrence) and her mother (Elisabeth Shue) move into a remote house at the end of a long, rural road next door to another house where some mysterious murders took place years before. Daughter takes a shine to the awkward loner—the only survivor of said dead family—who still lives by himself in the house. All this works out pretty much as you’d expect if you’ve seen a certain classic horror movie from 1960, right down to the closing shot. Of course, they throw in a few red herrings to try and disguise the pilferage. There are also couple of dead-end subplots added that serve absolutely no purpose other than to bump the half-baked scenario up to feature length. The first two acts are nothing more than tin-eared dialogue, but the closing game is pure nonsense that almost gave me carpal tunnel from throwing WTF? gestures at the screen. (But not in a fun way.) It’s just very bad writing forcing the characters to do very stupid things to keep the very stupid thing moving to its very stupid coda. Cinemark 14, Feather River Cinemas and Paradise Cinema 7. Rated PG-13.