SPOILER DISCUSSION

1.The conversation between Megan and Samantha at Eclipse Pie nicely sets up the poisoned pizza maneuver the Ulman’s pull off on Samantha. The sign establishes the relationship between pizza and the eclipse, both circular objects which will bring about Samantha’s “ruin”. At the restaurant, Megan comments on the pizza’s taste being awful and notes that the Ulman’s could have a child from hell. At the house, Samantha visibly expresses disgust at the pizza’s flavor and is subsequently knocked out for the Ulman’s eclipse ritual.

2.The dripping of the faucet is extended as a sign of a cover-up. Samantha first uses the running water to smother the sounds of her anguish. Later on at the 44-minute mark, when Samantha calls Megan for the first time and gets her voicemail, the film cuts to a shot of the dripping kitchen faucet momentarily before cutting back to Samantha trying to call again; in this situation, the voicemail covers up the reality of what’s happened to Megan. Finally at the 70-minute mark, when Samantha goes to fill her water bottle after eating part of the pizza, the faucet drips and covers up the noises of the Ulman’s setting up the basement for the nightly ritual.

3.The consistent use of diegetic music makes the sound design of Samantha’s dance sequence to The Fixx’s “One Thing Leads To Another” at the 55-minute mark all the more effective. Her jaunt through the house serves as a kind of calm before the storm and gives West ample time to establish Samantha as an innocent, joyful spirit as she pauses to wear goofy glasses and dance around the abode. But when she peers into the basement, the score becomes diminished and almost fades out entirely like it did at the 12-minute mark while Samantha was waiting for Mr.Ulman at the university. The encounter with the abyss, even if she doesn’t know it yet, usurps the moment and makes us aware that awful things are coming.

4.While the narrative as a whole takes a healthy amount of inspiration from Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, the best bit stems from the earlier scene of Samantha interacting with the public phone which feels like a me of the masterful phone-booth sequence from Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. Rosemary (Mia Farrow) finds herself in a phonebooth and feels unseen presences threatening to surround her. This threat “actualizes” when she notices that an man has entered into her frame , the space created by the booth, even though he doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with her issues. The fear of being watched makes any pseudo-confirmation of the paranoia just as terrifying as a genuine one.

Though it’s not executed at same level, Samantha’s scene evokes a similar sense of paranoia by creating the feeling of an unseen presence operating in the vicinity. The threat materializes in the form of the call proper.

5.Samantha’s paranoia comes to a fever pitch after she discovers the photograph of the murdered family, realizes their car is still present in the driveway, and then finds herself still unable to contact Megan Megan: she may not know what’s wrong but the series of eerie coincidences triggers a fight-or-flight response.

However, the film reveals to the audience that an unseen man lingers watching Samantha and cuts to a ground-level shot of a him putting out a cigarette with his feet. The cigarette immediately cues us in that this is Victor, the same person who killed Megan in a brutal scene earlier.

Megan’s death starts with taking a detour in the graveyard from earlier, getting offered a lighter by Victor from seemingly out of nowhere , and being shot by him without a moment’s hesitation. The brutal sequence, the first moment of violence in the film, ends with Victor taking the cigarette from Megan’s corpse and continuing to smoke it, so the impact of the cigarette still lingers in the viewer’s mind.

The consequent dynamic exhibits a classic sense of Hitchcockian tension Samantha’s uncertain of what’s going on but thinks protection is advisable and grabs a knife, but we know that a murderer lies in wait outside making this protection a necessity.

Samantha traverses the house looking to find the source of her discomfort and West constantly draws our attention back to the knife, reinforcing the ever-present real danger lurking outside the house. But then he ratchets the stakes by revealing a ritual sacrifice lurking behind a locked door that Samantha attempts to investigate; there’s something terrifying coming for Samantha from all sides, and she’s none the wiser to any of it.

Just as she’s about to investigate further, the doorbell rings and she realizes her pizza order is at the door. She quickly goes to retrieve the food, knife in hand, and exchange cash for the goods without a moments hesitation before promptly closing the door. Yet, the shot of the exchange reveals that the pizza delivery driver is none other than Victor. The threat to her real well-being stands right in front of her, but instead of stabbing him, she gives him money. Then, she uses the knife to cut the pizza. Instead of taking out the real threat watching her from outside the house in a slasher-styled P.O.V shot, she cuts the spiked meal which eventually incapacitates her.

We can only watch in horror as Samantha naturally lets her guard down to enjoy a meal after a long day with little rest. It’s uncertain what’s going to happen but the set-up makes it abundantly clear it’s not going to be pleasant making the wait for the finale excruciating.

In perfect fashion, Samantha does eventually end up slicing Victor’s neck with the knife, making good to correct her previous mistake.

6. When the eclipse starts, the lightbulb that Samantha tries to put on breaks and the entire house’s light supply goes out. The darkness inside and outside synchronize and represent the moment where the interpersonal and symbolic struggles begin to play out on the same battlefield. The cinematography shifts at this moment and becomes more handheld and chaotic while the shot compositions employ more canted angles to reflect the distorted, horrific powers at work.

The film employs a series of quick edits in sequential order with three images – the blood red eclipse moon, a candle light, and Samantha tied up – by flickering each of the images against a black backdrop multiple times before moving to the next image in the sequence all while keeping the rhythm consistent with Samantha’s loud heartbeat. The moon brings with it a darkness which brings “new” light and opens new possibilities. When Samantha wakes, she’s forced to battled for which of these worlds becomes instantiated.

7.Furthermore, the moon serves as a reading of where Samantha’s current struggle is situated. When she agrees to meet Mr. Ulman, we see a shot of the moon in the distance. Her fate is now tied to the eclipse.

When Victor comes to deliver the pizza, he looks up at the moon once again and its shadows have changed to reflect the change in time. Samantha’s taken the bait and can now be properly sedated for the ritual.

After Samantha kills Mrs. Ulman, we cut to a close-up of the moon. Before she dies, Mrs. Ulman asks for a sign from Satan which makes the close-up of the moon a confirmation from the latter. He’s given her a sign and moves to take charge of the situation.

When Samantha runs out of the house, West opens on a canted shot of the moon and then pans down to Samantha running out. Her battle with the moon qua Satan is coming to an end and only one side will come out on top of this tumultuous battle.

8. Samantha threatens to shoot at the moon when confronted by Mr. Ulman after he claims that she can no longer stop the process and looks up the moon, basking upon his master’s proxy and tool of change. Realizing that shooting the moon will do nothing, she turns the gun on herself and tries to take herself out.

This reversal of isolating and taking out the proper threat feels like an inversion of the knife-pizza scene (5); this time the “threat” proper is targeted instead of a “representative” of it.

Yet, Mr. Ulman is correct and Samantha’s efforts are too late. A television segment later on indicates that the moon defied the laws of physics to move faster than possible, thereby circumventing Samantha’s attempts to do harm by having her action fall just outside of the demonic window of vulnerability. “Culture” has won and overdetermined the individual struggle by the time Samantha is able to exercise her agency, cementing her fate as demonic-mother-to-be.

9.While eating the pizza, Samantha begins to watch George Romero’s black-and-white film, Night of the Living Dead, a story in which a group of people find themselves surrounded by an distorted humanity looking to attack and transform them.

The House of the Devil, extends the black-and-white color palette, suggesting a connection between the Ulman’s and their rituals and the “living dead” looking to transform more people. When Samantha realizes that another family lived in the house, she relives her memory of Megan and herself arriving and noticing the now out-of-place car and recolors the memory in the same black-and-white format. The deceased original owners are the victims of the house that found themselves under attack by the Ulman’s and were subsequently “eaten”, rendered fuel for the upcoming ritual.

Having taken refuge in another victim’s household to defend against an corrupting antagonist force, Samantha finds herself in the same position as the protagonists of Romero’s film. Both antagonistic forces represent a perversion of humanity, an “evil” returning to the flesh. Both forces also seek to “convert” their victims and render them part of their nightmarish orders.

Samantha finds herself becoming victim once the lightbulb she reaches for shatters, and the resulting shot and discoloration “transforms” The House of the Devil into a miniature Night of the Living Dead. She tries to defend herself within the house but is unable to stave off the Ulman’s; consequently, she’s bitten/impregnated and “transformed” into a denizen of the “new world”.