First I should say that Ted Dekker's Thr3e was his first book to be adapted into a movie and House his second. Thr3e is basically my favorite book and I think it adapted pretty damn well into a movie, for a budget flick. I don't want to sound whiny when I say "The book was better", but we all know it almost always is, especially with true masters like Dekker. I guess I was really surprised to see how different the movie was when the Thr3e movie was fairly faithful. Dekker has many many books that I hope to see in movie form, many of them I feel will make great movies once he has enough prestige and budget to consider them, then House will be considered part of the trial and error process.
Many of you may not even know what House is, it has had a few commercials (probably more than Thr3e), but remained mostly hidden to those who are not already Peretti or Dekker fans with their eyes on the web waiting for such things. I never considered House to be one of his better works but like a true Dekker fanboy, I just blame Peretti (no offense to Frank Peretti who also writes good books, I just enjoy Dekker so much more). Still while this is an event that passed by unnoticed to most, to me it was rather important being only the second book by my favorite author to be adapted into a movie. Forget that they're small budget movies filmed in Poland, I'm still excited. It lasted all of a few days in theaters and then started vanishing (hence my having to commute to freaking Edwards Jurupa yay many miles away just to see it). To summarize...
One game. Seven players. Three rules. Game ends at dawn. Several people become stranded in backwoods Alabama because of a road spike trap and end up at this creepy old house, a bread and breakfast of sorts. They become captives of the house when ambushed by a killer Barsidious White known locally as the Tin Man (portrayed in the movie by Michael Madsen) and the mysterious and dark powers of the house itself. A tin can falls down the chimney with rules scratched on it.
Welcome To My House.he wears a metal mask and usually carries a big weapon or firearm, he basically comes off as a cool and calculating intelligent Jason Voorhees. Anyway I'm trying to not be spoiler-heavy.
House Rules:
1. God came into my house and I killed him.
2. I will kill anyone who comes to my house
like I killed God.
3. Bring me one dead body and I might let
rule #2 slide.
You have until dawn.
In the movie White is known exclusively as the Tin Man, because Barsidious White is a name that ties House to several other Ted Dekker books, and all ties the book had to the broader Ted Dekker universe of Black, Red, White, Showdown, (House here), Saint, Skin, Chosen, Infidel, Renegade, Chaos, Sinner, etc., have been cut. The movie has been constructed in a way that it is a stand alone product (not that the book was ever far from such)
Opening with saying that it was very different from the book sounds stupid since that tends to always be true, but there are movie adaption of books and then there are movies remotely based around the core idea of a certain book and this is certainly the latter. I made the mistake of reading the book most recently a week ago so me and my damn memory, I was picking apart every factual change. I won't list them all because that would take forever and I'm trying to be mostly spoiler free. Just because it was different doesn't make it bad though. I think it has perfectly legitimate reasons to be called bad, like being disjointed and rushed for starters.
I think if I was seeing the movie without having read the book that I might have appreciated it more. It contained Anberlin music much to my surprise, so fans of Anberlin or Air 1 listeners like myself will find that fun. The ending of the movie was certainly interesting (and quite unique from that of the book) and it did toy around with some different ideas and perspectives... and the special effects were way more awesome than I ever expected them to be in that budget... but I still find the book to be better for numerous reasons in my never-to-be-humble opinion.
Rushed. Rushed rushed rushed. Big clusterfuck of this-stuff-is-too-much-to-condense-but-we-tried-anyway, but thats just my opinion. I feel the movie was too short. It wasted too much time on scenes that didn't merit it. It cut most of the spiritual stuff out and was marketed as an everyday horror movie, turning off the very audience that were the only people likely to see it beyond fans of the book. It felt rushed and the characters and motives were transparent. In the book when things happened we didn't know their meaning for a long time, we struggled with trying to figure out who was good and who was evil, and the identity of the serial killer wasn't painfully obvious and was revealed around the end instead of too freaking early. It felt like things meant to have meaning by the end were always qualified and explained instantly after. The movie version certainly felt more shallow and dumbed down at times... Dekker and Peretti both have always never hesitated to delve into the true nature of good and evil, especially evil. I felt the movie to not capture that as much, the movie was more about the horror and the special effects and the very visual adventure and less about the epic battle of good and evil taking place between the lines.
It wasn't an awful movie by any means though, don't let my criticism fool you, and I certainly don't blame the people behind the movie, I remember reading it and thinking it would be rather hard to condense and adapt into a movie. I'm not picking it apart for being different, I mean halfway through the movie I realized just how radically different it was from the movie and it was fun not to know EXACTLY what was going to happen next. Some of the ideas toyed around with in the movie were good, I just feel that overall the movie was much more shallow, devoid of mystery, and condensed to be too much stuff in too short of a movie. You don't get the understanding of the nature of the characters the gradual look into their pasts... Some books were never meant to be great as movies, but I still think there were fatal mistakes made along the way in this one... Thr3e on the other hand had a pretty strong movie adaption and I still have high hopes for the MANY future Dekker movies being planned right now including Blink (now known as Blink of an Eye), Blessed Child, and the Martyr Song books. I hear Lionsgate has rights to Adam and I would LOVE to see a movie of that one, I think that one could be book loyal and still enjoy big mainstream sucess. I still don't consider the movie or the epic commute out there a waste of money by any means, but I'm not necessarily going to preorder the DVD or Blu-ray Disc yet... (it probably won't hit bluray but I'm a fan of the format and I can always hope)
I think the first mainstream movies of Ted Dekker books will probably be the Circle Trilogy, Black Red and White. Interesting stuff.
My end suggestion. Read the book. If you still have interest see the movie. As much as the movie isn't really a book adaption, I don't see it having appeal to anybody who wasn't a fan of the book.
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