Welcome to the Blumhouse Feels like repackaged goods, with a single exception

Jason Blum’s renowned horror production company branches out with Welcome to the Blumhouse, a series of four films on Amazon Prime that straddle the line between genres. Gathering a diverse smattering of talent and storytelling, the collection runs the gamut of terror with domestic drama, tech parables, and traditional frights, but in the end, Welcome to the Blumhouse - with a single exception - tastes more like stale leftovers than a fresh meal. Minor spoilers ahead…

Over the last two decades or so, Jason Blum’s horror production company - Blumhouse - has built quite a reputation. Admirably bridging the gap between mainstream audiences and genre enthusiasts, Blum’s economical oversight and keen eye for burgeoning horror talent have turned his long-running studio into a bona fide hitmaker, bringing us cinematic and cultural touchstones such as Paranormal Activity, Get Out, and The Invisible Man. Recently, Blumhouse has also embraced the avenue of streaming platforms, first by collaborating with Hulu on its still-running Into the Dark series, and then by becoming one of the earliest production companies to release its films on streaming and VOD in the wake of COVID-19. The studio’s latest streaming endeavor, a four-film anthology on Amazon Prime Video titled Welcome to the Blumhouse, premiered over the last two weeks. The Lie, Black Box, Evil Eye, and Nocturne form a series of horror and horror-adjacent projects looking to further cement the producer as a ubiquitous genre presence, but unfortunately, these back-to-back features won’t do much to bolster the Blumhouse name - the majority of Welcome to the Blumhouse is lackluster fare, delivering menial thrills through melodrama and uneven execution.

If one word could be used to describe the overall vibe of Welcome to the Blumhouse, it would be “repackaged.” Most of the entries feel like projects that couldn’t pass muster for theatrical release, coming across instead as messy productions relegated to a streaming dumping ground. And while this may seem like a cruel and harsh characterization, for one of the films, it also happens to be the truth: Veena Sud’s The Lie (Grade: C-) is a 2018 film that floundered in post-production hell for years before its Amazon premiere. Making its entrance at the Toronto International Film Festival over two years ago, The Lie shared a Galas presentation title with peers such as First Man, A Star is Born, and Widows, suggesting it as a serious awards contender. With its heavy subject matter and its depiction of a disintegrating family in the wake of horrific tragedy, The Lie has all the trappings of prestige drama, but in actuality, it flails uncontrollably in the murky middle ground between inept thriller and overwrought parody.

Dramatic suspense that pratfalls into an unintentional comedy of errors, The Lie centers around Kayla (Joey King, in yet another role beneath her caliber), a 15 year-old girl who inexplicably kills her best friend Brittany by pushing her off a bridge into an icy river. Sending her separated parents (Peter Sarsgaard and Veena Sud mainstay Mirielle Enos) into a panic that leads to the titular coverup, the narrative mostly revolves around the family’s deteriorating alibi and the exceedingly silly machinations used to keep the police and Brittany’s distraught father (Cas Anwar) at bay. There’s plenty of heft here to spin compelling dramatic yarn, but with Sud’s direction and hilariously overblown script, The Lie is just content in its screaming matches, tearful theater, and preposterous final twist. Wholly uninterested in exploring the bevy of intriguing topics at hand, The Lie has shockingly little to say about parents, children, and - according to Sud herself - “the bigger American experience of racial injustice.”

“Most of the [*Welcome to the Blumhouse*] entries feel like projects that couldn’t pass muster for theatrical release, coming across instead as messy productions relegated to a streaming dumping ground.”

The second film in the Blumhouse slate - Black Box (C+) - fares considerably better than The Lie, even if it pilfers from sturdier films. A hypnotic mashup of Black Mirror, Memento, and Get Out, Emmanuell Osei-Kuffour’s entry tackles fathers and daughters, ethical terrors, and spooky mindscape invaders, but it’s about as scattershot as it sounds, never allowing its myriad of concepts to take hold. Still, it’s great to see Mamoudou Athie (Patti Cake$, Underwater) break out of the supporting role game for a meaty, leading turn. Athie plays Nolan Wright, an amnesiac struggling to regain his sense of self after a car accident claims his memory and his wife. Unable to even perform daily tasks without the help of notes, he submits himself to an experimental program led by Dr. Lillian Brooks (Phylicia Rashad) to recover his memories, utilizing a combination of hypnosis and virtual reality.

Black Box’s most compelling narrative thread, unfortunately, is also its most underserved. There’s palpable chemistry between Wright and his daughter Ava (Amanda Christine), conveying an interesting dynamic in which an elementary school-aged girl must help her father with the rigmaroles of daily life that have suddenly become difficult for him, but the film is in too much of a hurry to move onto its less potent sci-fi and horror beats. Accessing his past with Dr. Brooks’ machine, Wright pieces together his blocked memories, but he’s also stalked by shadowy figures and a menacing presence credited as the “Backwards Man.” It’s nominally creepy stuff, but Black Box’s uninspired horror elements never rise above creepypasta pastiche, and its derivative mad science is equally disappointing. And while there is a clever twist that’s accompanied by some mind-bending storytelling, one can’t help but feel that the film’s attempts to surprise owe an insurmountable debt to bigger and better works.

“[*Evil Eye* squanders] the potential of its able cast and its cultural specificity with a riff on stalker horror so generic that the film would fit in much better as a Lifetime movie.”

The third entry of Welcome to the Blumhouse, Evil Eye (D+), perfectly encapsulates the old platitude: “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.” Elan and Rajeev Dassani’s by-the-numbers thriller is by far the most disappointing of the anthology, squandering the potential of its able cast and its cultural specificity with a riff on stalker horror so generic that the film would fit in much better as a Lifetime movie. Sunita Mani (Save Yourselves!) portrays Pallavi, a young Indian-American living in New Orleans; perpetually unlucky in love, she shares a loving but prickly relationship with her mother (Sarita Choudhury, Homeland, The Hunger Games), whose overbearing protectiveness and superstitions often clash with her daughter’s more carefree sensibilities. After a series of failed setups, Pallavi seemingly meets the perfect guy in Sandeep (Omkar Maskati), a wealthy and charming bachelor who sweeps her off her feet.

Of course, being a Blumhouse production, Evil Eye takes a sinister turn when cracks in Sandeep’s unassailable façade begin to show. Translating the concept of punarjanam (reincarnation) into hokey schlock, the film attempts to bridge Pallavi’s Mr. Right with her mother’s own history of abuse and misogyny. Adapted from screenwriter Madhuri Shekar’s own Audible audio play, Evil Eye perhaps hews a little too closely to its source material: static and completely sapped of energy and tension, the film loves to exposit through its numerous, interminable phone conversations. It also doesn’t help that Sandeep is laughably generic and uninteresting as a villain - once his mask slips off, the narrative sinks into a series of trite misunderstandings and clichéd stalker tropes.

“…with its macabre imagery and Argento-inspired colorscapes, *Nocturne* is quite successful at painting a portrait of mounting dread.”

Welcome to the Blumhouse is a grueling path, but at least it’s a path that leads to Nocturne (B), the best and brightest of the anthology. From the get-go, director Zu Quirke’s musical frightener separates itself from the pack with a stylish and punchy confidence - with its macabre imagery and Argento-inspired colorscapes, Nocturne is quite successful at painting a portrait of mounting dread. Unfolding like a proto-Black Swan, the film revolves around a teenage musician (Sydney Sweeney, HBO’s Euphoria) whose bitter rivalry with her twin sister (Madison Iseman, Annabelle Comes Home) reaches Faustian levels at a cutthroat conservatory.

Nocturne, unlike the rest of the Welcome to the Blumhouse lineup, firmly plants its feet in the horror space: Its jump scares are executed with aplomb, and the blood flows freely with some disturbing set pieces, including a brazen final image that is searing in its execution. But even without its horror elements, the film works compellingly as a dueling-musicians thriller; it’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but Sweeney and Iseman are excellent in conveying their escalating feud and the crushing pressure of musical competition. With Quirke’s deft compositions, Nocturne stands head and shoulders above its anemic compatriots - a fully formed narrative with a craftily wielded dread, it’s the only film of the series worthy of the Blumhouse name.