The House of the Devil

A broke student takes a babysitting job at a remote house on the night of a lunar eclipse. There is no baby.

West commits absolutely to the period: the zooms, the freeze-frame credits, the Walkman, the feathered hair, and a grain structure that comes from actually shooting 16mm rather than filtering.

The pacing is the point and it is divisive. Very little happens for an hour. Samantha explores, orders pizza, dances to The Fixx with headphones on, and the tension is entirely a matter of the house being too big and the film refusing to cut away.

Tom Noonan is superb as the man who hires her, playing every line as slightly too long a sentence.

When it finally goes, it goes very fast and very hard.