House of Spoils Review: Mediocre, Meandering

In this supernatural horror film, a chef who decides to start her own restaurant in a remote mansion in the middle of nowhere faces off against dark and malevolent spirits in her home along with all the headaches and heartaches that come with making a big new life change. The film has a runtime of 101 minutes.

House of Spoils Review

Whenever people voluntarily move into a haunted house, I wonder why anyone in their right mind would choose to start a new family or, in this case, a new restaurant, of all things, with a spooky housemate. Ariana DeBose’s Chef, as she is called in this movie, decides against the better judgement of anyone who has ever watched a horror movie, to make her patrons drive to the middle of nowhere for a sensual experience of the taste buds to a house where the doors and windows like to make their presence known rather loudly. It’s a baffling decision, but I guess horror movies would stop existing without such baffling and senseless determinations.

Just as Hiral Sen tells Chef at one point, the film is safe and derivative, devoid of any soul. There’s nothing unique going on here and the movie seems to be happy depending on silly jumpscares and uninteresting showcases of how difficult owning a restaurant is. The latter falls short by a mile and makes you want to revisit The Bear to spike your anxiety. As for the former, the film’s unimpressive attempt at doing something new only to fall on the usual goofy antics is nothing short of disappointing. There are interesting moments, don’t get me wrong, but the film tries to play it safe, almost too safe, and never really distinguishes itself from the hundreds of other horror films that try to invoke a sense of fear out of you.

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Some of what we see in the movie isn’t even horrifying or scary – for a lot of the runtime, it’s just Chef trying to find a menu and running after a bunny. And I gotta give it to the movie, I almost got lost in the sauce while Chef found the new menu of her dreams that blows people’s minds. However, that bit is limited to only a handful of scenes before diving headfirst into mediocrity. I think the problem is that the film is unsure of what it wants to be and thus runs around in circles and banging doors to get us out of our slumber.

In all honestly, the movie is fun when it’s talking about the menu, the ingredients and the kitchen stuff. But it loses itself badly when it tries to do the supernatural stuff, showcasing odd, uninteresting and frankly boring sequences that are so cliche that they make you roll your eyes. And, to be honest, the film gets a bit nonsensical after a bit, with random things happening that make no sense and have no flow. There’s also a discussion surrounding witches and mixing your feminine energy with the earth that I get – I mean, it is telling us to let go of everything and enjoy the process of being who you are. The message is warm somehow, but the lack of thrills is what got on my nerves and it never really let up.

Final Thoughts

House of Spoils has its moments of awe and wonder with the dash of empowerment messaging towards the end. Unfortunately, there are hardly any real thrills and chills here and the occasional pesky door slam won’t cut it for most people. Although trying to do something different, the movie fails to deliver on mixing the beauty and anxiety of making delicious food with that of a haunted house, leaving us to sit there confused more often than not.

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