Review of Cubbyhouse

Introduction

Cubby House a low budget Aussie horror movie with more than a few passing similarities to both Amityville and Evil Dead. An American family move into a run-down house in a quiet Australian suburb, a house were 2 children were murdered 30 years earlier.

The children stumble across a cubby house (aka a shed in the UK) in the overgrown garden and soon their behaviour starts to change. Wouldn`t you know it`s some sort of gateway to hell and the family end up in a fight for their lives against an ancient demon, don`t you just hate it when that happens!

Video

The picture quality is mediocore. During daylight shots everything is pretty much fine but in the darker scenes everything gets a touch grainy. Nothing amazingly bad but enough to have made me notice it in various shots.

On the subject of visuals some of the effects are a little on the dubious side however I suppose I can forgive it the odd slip up due to it`s low budget, after all Evil Dead did fine with unrealistic special effects :)

Audio

This is the real surprise. Not only do you get a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack but a very good one to boot. The rear channels are used to excellent and chilling effect whilst the front of the soundstage is well used to create an engrossing audio environment.

This goes along way to adding to the atmosphere of the movie and really helps to hold your attention.

Features

A trailer and some cast biographies. Still I didn`t really expect anything else to be honest.

Conclusion

As I mentioned earlier on this movie does have some similarities to both Amityville and Evil Dead but unfortunately they were a little too obvious for my liking. Along with being blatant the film makers also failed to include some of the stronger points of movies of this kind. Details such as a story or some genuine tension would have been nice.

Ok so horror movies don`t have the strongest story lines in the movie world however this one dispenses with any real background and makes no attempt whatsoever to explain what is going on and why. As implausible as the end result usually is the complete lack of any such details makes it much harder for anyone in the audience to actually care about anything that happens and such is the case here.

There are few moments where you even start to think of the word `scary` with only the great soundtrack providing any moments that could even come close to chilling.

When all`s said and done it`s a low budget horror flick so if you like that kind of thing then you might want to take a look but there are many better and far scarier examples of this type of movie you could buy instead.