'The House of the Devil': An homage to '80s horror

Low-rent 1980s horror returns with filmmaker Ti West's "The House of the Devil," which scores points for restraint and attention to detail, but defaults when the mortgage comes due with a bloody, uninspired climax.

The movie is 90 percent setup, some of it acutely observed and starkly evocative of the decade in which it's set, yet much of it as dull as the big-hair '80s.

On-screen virtually the entire movie, newcomer Jocelin Donahue comes off as a bit stiff, though her character, college sophomore Sam, is refreshingly more assertive than the genre's usual airhead victims.

West offers a prolonged buildup as Sam finds the perfect apartment she can't afford, then stumbles onto a campus flier for a baby-sitting gig offered by the Ulmans (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov). It's clear Sam should skip this job.

We know from the title, the shots of the lunar eclipse and a few clunky clues that the Ulman clan are devil worshippers on a deadline.

In the end, "The House of the Devil," though authentic in execution, is about as scary as something you saw way back when.