Fall of the House of Rose

Rating: 10/10 (13 June 2018)

A reimagination of the African American experience through the guise of a horror story, following all the traditions associated with the genre, that places, arguably for the first time in the history of popular film, the victim and dupe of the monsters as being distinguished by their marginalised status through race. The film takes no shame in its identification with tradition given that it needs the audience to have some sense of familiarity in order for its messages to get across. For example, we know just by seeing the daunting, panning-out scene of Rose's parents' house, isolated in the middle of the forest, what implications are held in store for Chris in regards to the various levels of sanity he will encounter, the role he will play in relation to the people he will encounter, and the foreboding moral decline that awaits him because we have read Edgar Allan Poe. What we don't know, however, is specifically what struggles await him, and what he will need to do to overcome them. It is through this anticipation, one which we have nurtured over the course of all the horror movies we have hitherto watched, that we become most surprised, given that what we expect as being unfamiliar is inevitably familiar to an overwhelmingly uncomfortable degree. This is because as fantastical as the film's premise is, it alludes to a repression that pervaded a large part of American history which we are ultimately forced to recognise within ourselves. The final scene of the film is so effective for this reason, and consequently draws us to think quite deeply about what it is that causes us to react the way we do.