My quick rating - 3.1/10. House Sitter kicks off with wealthy homeowner Harold Finch (David Varrieur) giving Kayla (Jenna Forcier) the grand tour of his mansion, complete with warnings about sticky doors and making sure everything stays locked. It's meant to build tension. Instead, it immediately introduces the biggest horror of the movie. The acting. If first impressions matter, this one trips over the front doorstep.
Kayla rounds up her friends for what should be an easy house-sitting gig. First is Dani (Cristina Méndez), who works at an actual comic book shop, which was a fun little touch. Then there's boyfriend Blake (Evan Eiglarsh), an influencer whose first priority is filming content around the mansion. The moment he started posing for the camera, I was rooting for the masked killer. If your biggest personality trait is "don't forget to like and subscribe," horror movies have traditionally had a solution for that.
Unfortunately, the potential victim list is tiny. Three main characters, one creepy house...and maybe a pizza delivery driver if we're feeling generous. It's hard to build suspense when you can practically count the remaining survivors on one hand before the opening credits have settled.
For an 87-minute film, House Sitter looks like it’s trying to get out of being a horror movie as soon as possible. The dialogue in this movie is terrible. It consists of pointless conversations that don’t lead anywhere. Characters are talking just for the sake of talking as per the script.
The pizza delivery driver gets a bizarre little sequence where he blasts heavy metal while yanking the steering wheel around like he's trying to beat Need for Speed. It adds nothing to the movie, but at least someone was having fun. Not me.
Not until the 35-minute mark does the first kill occur, and when it does, it's just lame. The horror junkies are left asking themselves whether or not they have started watching the film or the making-of featurette.
Of course, this is yet another modern horror movie in which everyone has a drone since we are treated to the obligatory aerial shots from up above. These days, drone shots have become just as common in indie horror movies as terrifying masks and dying flashlights.
To make matters worse, it takes nearly another half hour before anything horror-adjacent happens aside from the masked killer creeping around. The suspense is non-existent, and despite the occasional stalking scenes, House Sitter never finds any of that urgency it desperately needs.
One bright spot is director Christopher Leto's use of practical effects. When the violence finally shows up, it at least looks tangible instead of drowning everything in questionable CGI. That's always appreciated and gives the finale a little extra punch.
The mystery itself isn't particularly mysterious. The identity of the murderer is quite obvious long before the actual reveal. There are a couple of twists along the way, trying to redeem the boring first hour. When contrasted with the slow start of the film, they easily become the best parts of the movie.
In the end, House Sitter spends far too much time talking instead of actually giving us the horror we came for. Better pacing, sharper dialogue, and a significantly higher body count would've gone a long way. Why not throw a house party, give us some victims?
Instead, it's a movie where I spent more time waiting for something to happen than watching it happen.
https://jackmeat.com/house-sitter-2026/
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