The great thing about a horror anthology film, is the chance of walking away with something you like is pretty good. After all, they give you three or more chances.

THE PERFECT HOUSE is indeed a horror anthology. It features three different stories enveloped in a wrap around story. I normally don’t even consider the wrap around stories because there’s never any real substance to them, except setting up the next featured story. Soo… There are three stories here, and two of the three are worth talking about, but I’ll touch on the third briefly.

The first tells the tale of a VERY dysfunctional family. The family consists of the husband, wife, daughter and son. They are all assembled in the basement sheltering themselves from a storm. Throughout we learn of dirty little secrets that come out and eventually come to a murderous end.

This was one of the ones I liked. However, I had issues with the casting of the mother. She looked to be the age of the kids grandmother and talked to the husband like a hate-filled mother-in-law. I could not at any point picture her as the mother / wife in this ensemble. This really bothered me and is the only reason I’m mentioning it. Otherwise it had some great twists and turns. Some good solid performances, especially from the kids, and a great start in the blood-flow department.

The second was about a serial killer who captures people just to torture and kill them (well for the females a little rape too). He has two cages set up one houses a girl he captured five years ago and keeps her, from what I gathered, just to have someone to talk to. The other cage houses the temporary residents, who he tortures and eventually kills.

There are two reasons this segment was my favorite. First there is Holly Greene, who plays the permanent victim. She had the best dialogue (see this posts title) and the fun way she belittles the other victims as they come in. There are some great dialogue in this scene, some will stick with me for awhile “I couldn’t say anything or I would get raped in the ass of Fridays”. Also for some great, gross, bloody torture makeup effects, like cutting off some dudes eyelids. There are some great effects here and a superb job by Andrew Lavin. You would not expect this level of effects going into a lower budget flick.

The segment really doesn’t have a complicated plot. Basically someone trying to escape the confines of a killer. But it sure was fun to watch.

The third and final segment, which the film starts off with, is about a family going to have dinner with their middle-aged neighbor. But the guy has other plans for the family, especially if he doesn’t get his weed-eater back.

This segment may have faired better if it didn’t directly come after another torture fueled story, and a much better one. At this point you want to see something a little different than you just saw and there really isn’t much to talk about here. It just kind of goes flat, performances and all.

Overall, I enjoyed this film. It had some great performances, impressive makeup effects, and those things kept me well entertained.

This is one I would certainly add to my collection to revisit.