House of Ashes (2024) Review

Exonerated of the murder of her husband Adam, Mia Sheldon (Fayna Sanchez) still finds herself under house arrest and for twelve months as the result of her being the first woman convicted courtesy of a draconian update of the law, which now considers miscarriage a criminal act. Sharing her enforced living space with boyfriend – or is he? – Marc (Vincent Stalba), Mia tries to deal with her grief while being bullied by her boorish Probation Officer Davis (Lee Boxleitner) and hassled by online media celebrity pest Lexi ShokToks (Laura Dromerick) who’s trying to get some juicy background on the woman she disgracefully refers to as a “miscarriage killer.”

If Mia and Marc’s relationship wasn’t being tested enough, a series of strange occurrences plague the house. Mia suspects supernatural forces are at work but Marc thinks someone human must be targeting them because of Mia’s current profile and his inability to convince her otherwise results in him becoming increasingly weary of his partner’s fragile psychological state, leaving Mia to solve the mystery on her own and overcome the potentially dangerous presence in her life.

Director Izzy Lee has a wealth of experience in memorable, short format terror so it’s exciting to see her step into the feature film domain. I’m certainly a huge fan of 2022’s bizarre, hilarious Meat Friend (I quote random lines from it to my increasingly annoyed meat friends), which demonstrates just how Lee and regular script collaborator Steve Johansen take an idea and run with it in unrelentingly creative and strange ways.

This is not to say the viewer should be expecting the outrageous comedy of Meat Friend to be present in House Of Ashes. Far from it. The opening act is a series of righteous howls against how society, more specifically a far-right leaning society, views women, taking away their reproductive rights, expecting them to conform to a set of societal norms which no man would accept and dismissing any protest as the incessant whining of a bunch of snowflakes. It made me angry, which is the reaction of the snowflake which some people clearly think I am. Well played.

As fascinating as the initial stanza is in terms of adding a political charge to the proceedings, the tale takes the decision to settle into a more conventional, haunted house groove, switching its attention to Marc. Initially, he’s very much the doting, supportive boyfriend but begins to show the far less perfect guy within as Mia becomes drawn to the circumstances of Adam’s death and a feeling that his ghost may be the one behind the creepy events happening in the house.

The low budget of House Of Ashes occasionally works against it, a couple of the plot turns may be writ a tad too large and a couple of the shocks don’t quite have the impact they possibly should but that should take nothing away from the obvious care taken by the cast and crew to produce something outside of the norm. The score by Antoine Lamothe is effective without being intrusive and Sophia Cacciola’s cinematography is a cut above. In particular, a couple of gorgeously lensed smoke and dust effects had me rewinding the action to watch them over and over again.

Lee and Johanson’s screenplay keeps time with all the requisite horror beats but there’s also a consistent emotional punch to the proceedings which hits hard, ups the tension and moves the viewer through various levels of anxiety with each new revelation. That the strain doesn’t become unbearable is down to a mesmerising central turn from the brilliant Sanchez and a character arc which doesn’t shy away from portraying Mia in a realistic light, the effects of her psychological trauma giving rise to behaviour which is a wrench for the audience to experience.

Fans of supernatural horror won’t be disappointed with House Of Ashes but the additional socio-political angles leave the viewer with much to consider once they’re out of the cinema. Raising pertinent issues concerning coercive control and the erosion of women’s rights in addition to tackling the fallout of loss, the ghosts in Izzy Lee’s powerful feature film bow are not just those which may be lurking in the walls of Mia’s domestic prison. See it with someone who wants to make your country great again.

Movie Rating:

House of Ashes trailer