Macabre…ish Horror Review: The Deep House
The Deep House, 2021/ 1 hr 25 min.
Engaged youtube creators, Tina (Camille Rowe) and Ben (James Jagger), travel to Europe looking for haunted houses to stay in and document their experiences.
In the South of France they hear about a sanatorium that is submerged in a lake. They are disappointed to find out it is a tourism hot spot. A local, Pierre (Éric Savin), offers to show them another spot, it’s an isolated area of the lake located in the woods. The entire area, known for frequent floods, was artificially submerged in 1984. The area they are going to is the location of a perfected preserved but submerged house. They’ll drive most of the way but last few miles will be by foot.
Soon after arrival, Ben and Tina dive in. They see perfectly preserved vehicles and a staircase on their way to the house. And it’s not so much a house but a huge mansion with the ornate gate still intact. The area is also oddly empty of fish. There’s no easy way in because the house is shuttered and the steel doors, padlocked. They enter through a chimney and send their submersible drone in ahead.
It’s still fully furnished as if everyone just got up and left, just before it was flooded. It is also in pristine condition. No decay whatsoever, well except the piano.
It’s not long before strange things begin to happen. They hear odd noises and voices, there is movement that their detectors are not picking up and occasionally malfunctioning. In some of the rooms are articles, posters and photos of missing kids on the walls and suspicious symbols.
And there are scratches in a door, as if someone was trying to get out. In the kitchen, there’s a huge, person sized crucifix blocking a door. When they move it and open the door, the water is so murky they can’t see through it and when they can, they find two bodies bound in chains and they too are in good condition when they should be skeletons. On carved into the floor is a huge glyphs. On the shelves are jars containing body parts.
Tina is freaked out and ready to go and call the cops because it’s a crime scene but Ben wants more footage. On their way back, a brick wall is blocking the way they came in. Tina is becoming hysterical and she hallucinates a man coming right at them.
After Ben calms her down, they start searching for a way out. The windows will not break though. And after some kind of creature swims past them they try to find where it came in but all they find are openings with grates. Then somehow Tina is alone, even the bodies vanish. And suddenly she’s fighting for her life.
Then Ben is back but he says he was right behind her the entire time. The bodies are back and then their eyes open, then both Tina and Ben swim out of the room and rush to close the door.
As they head toward the chimney, they house seems to fall in on them and once again Tina loses track of Ben, who’s locked in a bedroom, he loses his respirator and is trying to find it. And their coms, none of their tech is working.
Then the chandeliers begin to flicker and the dead people seem to be out, and terrorizing Tina. They eventually find each other but Ben is acting really weird now. His voice doesn’t even sound the same. Suddenly something is crawling up her suit. And Ben tells her it’s only a snake and to open her mouth. She takes off her mask instead.
Ben then leads her to the basement and he announces that there is no way out and that they belong there. He then tells the story of the place and a projector clicks on and the horrifying tale of this place is told.
They need to get out before their oxygen runs out and those undead people find them again.
This movie was directed by Alexandre Bustillo and is visually very dark, often with one small beam of light. I did struggle to understand some of the scenes and couldn’t tell what was happening. I definitely would have enjoyed this more if I could see. Plus this is a POV/shaky cam movie, just under water. French and English is spoken in this film.