The movie: Snowtown's claim to be based on true events had a great deal of credibility, but Ti West's The House of the Devil plays loose with such a claim. Jocelin Donahue plays Sam, a young student who takes a job as a babysitter in a strange isolated house - the absence of a child to babysit should have been the first indication that something is amiss, and by the evening draws on it becomes apparent that her presence there has very little to do with taking care of someone's offspring. What makes it a potential cult classic: There are plenty of movies out there which play on genre conventions at the same time as subverting them, but director Ti West's mixing up of slasher, haunted house and "Satanic panic" subgenres is about as close to the mark as any fan could hope for. West's real achievement is to discard the more schlocky, excessive tendencies of those from whom he draws inspiration in favour of slow build up and attention to atmosphere, and the result is a film which feels more indebted to Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby than the video nasties of the 1980s.
