Like people, a house can deceive you with its first impression. It has to have a guise in a film to turn characters into its residents and gain the audience’s trust. A house that plays a main villain can haunt, murder, or sometimes both.
A home can be a terrifying badass and paralyze moviegoers with fear if the actors are gracious enough to play second to their non-speaking comrade. Here are 10 movies where the house is the main villain of the piece.
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10 Amityville Horror
American International Pictures
The house in the original Amityville Horror film presents its illuminating countenance as the upstairs windows mimic human eyes, the chimney acts as the bridge of a nose, and the mid-floor windows are in the shape of a menacing grin. Murdered in the home were past occupants, and mysterious pranks interrupt the family’s housewarming, which turns dark and dangerous.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
Kathy (Margot Kidder) watches her husband George (James Brolin) become possessed, and those she enlists for help die once on the verge of discovering the sinister residence is the culprit. This house is the main villain in the 1979 classicand remains on the shore of Long Island, New York.
9 You Should Have Left
Universal Pictures
In David Koepp’s 2020 film You Should Have Left, “People have always stayed in that house. Some don’t leave. The right ones usually find the place, or maybe it’s the other way around. The place finds them.” Stetler (Kevin Bacon) pays a heavy price for being responsible for his late wife’s death. He watches her drown in their bathtub and doesn’t prevent it.
While vacationing with his new wife and daughter in a rental that neither of them chose, the house is the only object that knows he is guilty and haunts him and his child throughout the film. The home leaves remorse-ridden messages in Stetler’s journal and torments his little girl. When he and his daughter leave, the unlit road guides them in a circle back to the residence. There is no escape for Stetler, as the loathsome images of his dead wife appear, and the voice that reveals itself only to him becomes immense. He finally understands this irrepressible message, so he sends his family away. Stetler is left alone in this condemnatory domicile, which forces him to have a conscience.
8 The Dark and the Wicked
RLJE Films
A patriarch slowly dies, and a family’s grieving time halts because of depraved circumstances. The Dark and the Wicked stars a house overtaken by Satan. Released in 2020, the Bryan Bertino film counts down seven days of sinful deeds ravishing this mourning family in their household. The irony is this matriarchal atheist sings a gospel hymn in the opening scene, initially deceiving viewers into believing she is a God-fearing soul, only to be abandoned and betrayed by the Holy Ghost.
Seven days of wickedness play out — a mother chops off her fingers while cooking before hanging herself, a neighbor commits suicide by shotgun, and a health home aide plunges knitting needles into her eyes and belly — among other insidious events that take place in this home ruled by the Devil. The visiting priest warns,"[Satan]’s not out there. He’s already here."
7 Men
Entertainment Film Distributors
Although a priest, a snarky cop, a naked homeless man, and men giving birth are interesting enough to be the main villains in the film Men, it’s the 500-year-old house that attracts all of these abnormalities. The house and its grounds have almost a Shining effect with its flashing lights and mysterious players that visit unannounced, uninvited, and unwelcome.
Director Alex Garland leaves audiences baffled in the last 30 minutes of this 2022 horror with all of its cerebral and mystifying occurrences. The protagonist Harper Marlowe (Jessie Buckley) is psychologically rebounding from an abusive relationship and is mentally in a post-apocalyptic shock. Is Harper hallucinating, or is this house truly revealing idiosyncratic details about herself?
6 Ma
Blumhouse Productions
Ma (Octavia Spencer) was beyond pitiful in the 2019 film Ma. The veterinarian assistant is a lonely, traumatized middle-aged woman with a “sick” child at home. The house is quite dreary, but the basement becomes a new life for Ma when she meets carousing teenagers who recruit her to make an alcohol purchase. She schemes her basement into a “party crib” for the high schoolers as they and she soon entwine in school-night frolicking and her manipulative lacework.
Ma’s house is twofold. Misery is dominant upstairs — a daughter she sees as a burden in one room and in Ma’s bedroom, a shrine, a collage of pictures dedicated to her humiliating high school heartache, which is a constant reminder for revenge. The basement, drafty and dismal, turns into polish and pool tables. Ground-level also represents the life she wanted as a teenager before her deeds hellishly unify the two floors, turning Ma’s house into one whole wretched abode and the main villain in this thriller.
5 Poltergeist
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Built over a cemetery plot, the house in Poltergeist terrorizes a family unbeknownst to what lies underground. Director Steven Spielberg incorporates a scene inspired by an episode of the Twilight Zone, Little Girl Lost, in Poltergeist where Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke), a young girl is kidnaped by the “beyond.” This house has mirrors that make visitors trip — a crew member sent to the Freeling home to assist believes he’s peeling off his face in front of a bathroom mirror. The home’s spirits turn trees into intruding monsters that snatch small children in their sleep, and a perfect steak transforms into a maggot-filled jumble on the countertop to remind its inhabitants a looming entity doesn’t appreciate their presence or them searching for Carol Anne.
Carol Anne’s mother, Diane (JoBeth Williams), and a medium recover the girl through a bizarre and slimy concoction, pulling them through an iniquitous barrier. The house retaliates against the family, using more freaky victimizations to recapture Carol Anne. The Freeling house is not only the main villain in this 1982 flick but is also one of the most fearsome house bullies in film history.
4 Sinister
Entertainment One
A sadistic killer, or Mr. Boogie as he’s called in child drawings, hanged a family of four from a backyard tree of the Oswalt house in 2012’s Sinister. Ellison (Ethan Hawke) is a true-crime author who moves his family into this home with a gory reputation. He spends much of his time researching for his next book and watching home videos of the killer’s numerous ways of murdering people — burning a family alive in a car, drowning another in a pool. This sadist’s killing accomplishments are what haunt this house.
Ellison’s son’s night terrors return while living in the house and dead children, victims of Mr. Boogie, come back to visit. With every dig into the murder that occurred at Ellison’s home, Mr. Boogie becomes realistic and appears in the house, for Ellison has made himself a part of the murder timeline he’s investigating. The writer may have had enough, but just because the Oswalt family leaves the spooked home doesn’t mean they’re safe.
3 The Money Pit
Universal Pictures
The villain doesn’t always have to be murderous. This house drains a couple’s bank account. The stress of a bathtub falling through the ceiling, faulty wiring, and second-rate plumbing rips a couple apart and reunites them in the 1980 comedy The Money Pit. Walter (Tom Hanks) and Anna (Shelley Long) argue with each other to tears, pouring money into a lemon of a house they can’t seem to leave.
Every disastrous element of the couple’s current place seems to unveil a new layer of themselves to the audience — an intolerance for lying, cheating, and deceit — all the characteristics of the house. Once renovated, the viewers realize it’s the house leading the two on a path to commitment. As the home’s personality evolves, the characters’ self-awareness and love for each other elevate. This villainous house metamorphoses into a heroine at the end of the film.
2 Vivarium
Vertigo Releasing
Taking the shape of The Twilight Zone episode A Stopover in a Quiet Town, the film Vivarium stumps audiences with “what-is-the-purpose-of-this” questions. A husband and wife are looking for a home and arrive at this nefarious house in a convoluted-mapped neighborhood. Number 9 becomes the address of Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) and Gemma (Imogen Poots) forever.
In Stopover, a couple wakes up hungover in a strange bed and town where nothing is as it appears, and they are also trapped. The comparison between the two scripts becomes blatant when Vivarium’s Tom drops his cigarette and sees synthetic grass and dirt, similar to Stopover’s male protagonist having a mirror-image discovery and saying in disbelief, “It’s paper mache.” Vivarium’s couple stays captured, giving the impression they’re being surveilled in this house that looks identical to every home in the neighborhood, and a mutant baby is delivered for the pair to nurture. As they grow increasingly agitated, unable to flee this hopeless house in its labyrinth hood, Tom realizes the time he wasted deflecting instead of appreciating his wife. His last words are, “Home is wherever I’m with you.”
1 The House of the Devil
MPI Media Group
Satan, Beelzebub, the Prince of Darkness, Lucifer. The Devil has many names to fit his evils. The 2009 horror The House of the Devil doesn’t immediately reveal its house as the main villain. While the wicked homestead makes a late entrance, trepidation swiftly fills the old mansion-like abode in its introduction. A young woman thinks she’s sitting for an elderly, but her employers belong to a Satanic cult, creating a ruse to trap future sacrificial youths.
The house is abominable. With its many shadowy rooms and hidden doors, the residence acts as a maze that snares the young woman like a mouse. Once Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) enters the house, it feels instantly formidable. The residence has no supernatural powers, spirits, or walls closing in on its guests. But, the Devil worshipers later overpower Samantha and perform a Satanic ritual on her. The house quickly becomes the main villain in The House of the Devil, and Satan’s helpers use its star wrongdoer to commit atrocious murders for their leader.
