The 2006 House Of Usher film (as opposed to the countless other versions, most recently in 2008) is dull as all hell.Plainly put. Not much else to say. It's far too bland to even bother typing a review. It's a shoddy little piece. Relatively faithful to the original story, but a bland and tiresome film regardless.Move on. Buy something interesting. Like, I dunno, Blood Monkey- which I might review some time in the next few weeks.Since an IMDb review requires 10 or more lines, I suppose I really must elaborate: The film is tosh. It's trash. It's garbage. It takes the dry classical texts of Poe and vacuum seals them, taking out what little life remained from the distinctly dated original works. It borrows only the most obvious aspects of the story, ignores subtlety, and pisses on the livelier bits of the original story. I'm hard pressed to care about it, and even more pressed to write a review for a film so utterly pointless.Curse it. Curse it back to the burned out pit it most inevitably came from.For other reviews, ramblings, music, pictures, and stuff: http://chaos-inc.tumblr.com/

On July 13, 2008, "scpenn" wrote here that THE HOUSE OF USHER (2006) "was like something out of the far left wing of the democratic (sic) party." At first I was mystified by this remark, as I had not observed a political bent to the left OR right on my initial viewing. Fortunately, I hadn't yet returned this flick to the video store, so I was able to watch it again at 1/16th speed. In so doing, the following amazing plot twists were revealed in a nefarious series of subliminal images and subtitles:1)A draft-dodging coke-head buffoon uses a soon-to-"suicide" Enron bag-man from the state that lost the Alamo to keep-the-slaves slaves (!) to bribe the U.S. Supreme Court for a White House apartment. 2)Promising to be "uniter-not-a-divider," this bush-leaguer unites the Confederates, Nazis, and House of the Rising Sun under one bloody flag to take all the blue-state middle class jobs and tax dollars and give them to red state billionaires and foreign sheikhs. 3)Hearing his oil buddies were upset at making profits in only the billions when gasoline sold for 89 cents a gallon under his predecessor, the poison shrub engineers a series of catastrophes which boost oil firm executive compensation alone into the billions, while bringing down the U.S. economy on five-buck-a-gallon gas and getting more than a million people killed, including 10,000 Americans. Viewed at this speed, USHER is the most chilling horror flick ever!

I love horror movies and I am very fond of anything based even vaguely on Poe. So, I settled down happily with a bowl of popcorn to watch this movie.At first it had all the things that make a horror freak happy. There was a gloomy house, an equally gloomy housekeeper with dire warnings, and a mysterious figure seem at twilight and hiding in shadows.And at first, pieces of the movie seem to be in place. Main character girl instead of traditional male: nice twist. Hints that she had a sexual past with both the Usher twins: interesting update. Male Usher twin obsessive sexual interest in her: nicely creepy. Usher twin getting her pregnant and locking her in the house: again nicely creepy.And then it happens. Main character finds family photos. She sees that for the past seven generations the family has produced a set of male and female twins. She mutters something in a horrified voice which cannot be understood no matter how often the movie is replayed.This something is enough for the housekeeper(who would you'd think, know the "curse" all along) to suddenly say the family is cursed, to try to end the main character's pregnancy, and to try to kill the male twin. There is running and screaming and people dying, with the viewer with no idea WHY. There is a "twist" ending which makes no sense, again because the "curse" is unknown, and if the main character does supposedly know it, why is she happily having the babies? The visuals are good in the movie, the director is fairly good, the early creep factor at a decent level but because of the ending I can't give this movie a good rating.

In this very serviceable thriller, a young woman named Jill hears from her former lover Roderick. He and his sister Maddie, her best friend when the three of them were at college together, disappeared suddenly from her life several years ago and she had not heard from either of them since. Roderick tells her that Maddie has died, and asks Jill to come for the funeral.Roderick suffers from an illness that makes him sensitive to light and touch. He is a novelist and writes at night, wearing gloves and headphones to drown out sensation. He frequently communicates through typewritten notes that bear the Usher seal, weighty symbol of the burden of the Usher legacy. The novel he is writing parallels the happenings in the house, and he won't let Jill read it, saying that he isn't sure yet how it is going to turn out.Roderick asks Jill to stay because he needs her, but she only gradually discovers his full intent. Austin Nichols is the restrained Roderick to Izabella Miko's translucent but determined Jill. Both are well cast in their roles.The opening music and the repeated warnings of the housekeeper are a bit heavy-handed and the film might have done better to let the story unfold without them. The second half of the film has lots of plot twists that make for great after-viewing discussion. The artistry of the filming earned this film the best cinematography award at the Boston Film Festival where it premiered.I recommend seeing this movie (but not alone!)