“House on Eden” Brings New Life to Found Footage Genre
What would you do for content? The life of an influencer or a YouTuber seems pretty easy, right? It must be fun to spend your days goofing off with friends and making money. Anyone who has tried that career will tell you that it’s all fun and games until the ideas stop. When your livelihood is based on your ability to outdo yourself with every new piece of content you publish. Much like what happens in writer/director Kris Collins’ House on Eden, when your back is against the proverbial content wall, sometimes you have to take things to the next level.
Kris (Collins), Celina (Celina Myers), and their videographer Jay (Jason-Christopher Mayer) are popular paranormal YouTubers. They’ve covered the usual haunts, but sense that their audience is growing bored with their content. Kris does some digging online and comes across a haunted house that no paranormal YouTuber has ever been to before. The trio decides this place is what they need to elevate their content, but when they find themselves at a spooky house that’s abandoned in the woods, things go off the rails pretty quickly. Is a new video worth their lives?
Photo courtesy of RLJE Films and Shudder.
“A fucking bird just dive-bombed me and I dropped my meat sticks!” is the first line of House on Eden. That’s the wavelength that runs through the entire film. It’s as if the pranksters of YouTube were given the opportunity to make their own Blair Witch Project. Collins and Myers are content creators in the film and in real life as well, with a combined 70 million TikTok followers. Even if you’ve never come across their content on social media, it’s immediately clear that they’re comfortable in front of the camera. They turn their extroverted personalities on and off at the drop of a hat. It’s because of their confidence and familiarity with this type of on-the-go filmmaking that House on Eden’s found footage style feels fluid. In other films of this genre, it often feels like the script is twisting upon itself to create a reason for the cameras to always be there. Collins and Myers, and Mayer to a lesser extent, are naturals when it comes to immersion, knowing they can be captured from any angle.
House of Eden is a self-assured debut feature from Collins. Some people in Hollywood like to pretend that social media creators are lesser because they’re not working in the medium of film in the way Hollywood wants them to. House of Eden is Collins confidently saying that she can play in this Hollywood world, too, but that she’s going to do it her way. With her friends, her story, her style, and a fair share of smartly played jump scares to boot. While not a reinvention of the genre, House of Eden demonstrates a command of the form by someone who knows it intimately.
support your local film critic!
~
support your local film critic! ~
Beyond the Cinerama Dome is run by one perpetually tired film critic
and her anxious emotional support chihuahua named Frankie.
Your kind donation means Frankie doesn’t need to get a job…yet.
Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Letterboxd, & YouTube. Check out Movies with My Dad, a new podcast recorded on the car ride home from the movies.