“The House on Pine Street” is a supernatural thriller that delves beyond the potboiler bump-in-the-night scares that some studios dole out to theaters en masse. But make no mistake, the film has plenty of scares and creepy atmosphere that drive it toward the even more ominous ending. This house moves into you.

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The plot involves young Jennifer, played by the adroit actress Emily Goss, who is 7 months pregnant. She and her husband move to Kansas and rent a beautiful old home on Pine Street that seems to be just as depressed as she is. With its fern-green trim and cedar-shake siding, this two-story house gives evil a fitting address. Both the house and the expectant mother seem to not want to be occupied by life.

 

Soon, strange things begin to happen in the home, and one wonders if the house is haunted or if Jennifer’s despondent mind is creating an energy that might want to destroy the things around her. Not since “Rosemary’s Baby” has a film toyed with the audience in such a way to make them so uncomfortable. Is the pregnant woman sane enough to know that her sense of reality is being compromised? Or have the dark forces revealed just enough to make her sound crazy when she tries to tell someone? In this case, Jennifer has already suffered a mental breakdown so her plight comes from within, while outside forces–some well-meaning–are determined to keep her from recovering.

I talked with E3W Productions about the film, and they say that some of the story was inspired by true events. According to E3W, Aaron and Austin Keeling, co-writers and directors of “The House on Pine Street,”  grew up in a very old house in Kansas where strange things would happen, “Pictures would fly off walls, lights and electronics would turn on and off on their own, strange shadows and sounds happened all the time, and they even caught a voice on tape once. Growing up in such a freaky environment hardwired their minds to be interested in haunted house stories, so a haunted house film seemed like the right place to start.” The said.

Even producer and co-writer Natalie Jones has had her experiences with the supernatural. She says that a lot of her previous houses have been haunted, and even her current one could be slightly paranormal.

Although the title is “The House on Pine Street”, the building is only a co-star. For every empty creak in the floor boards, or ghostly impulsion of a closet door, Jennifer must also deal with her unapologetic past. Her inner demons are fighting for survival, she is pregnant, and her condescending mother (Cathy Barnett) seems to only want to sympathize with Jennifer’s burnt-out husband Luke (Taylor Bottles).

 

 

For an actress to have to juggle this myriad of emotions she better be well-prepared. E3W says Goss was not only prepared, but went above and beyond the duties of what was required, “She threw everything she had into this role and would end each day on set exhausted and spent, but ready for more. When she wasn’t on camera she was pouring over the script, making notes, jotting down ideas, and doing the work needed to bring this character to life. She never stopped working for the entirety of the shoot, and we think her dedication really shows in the end result.”

 

The real-life Kansas house used for shooting also went above and beyond what the script called for. The production crew kept picking up voices on the microphone and other anomalies, “Our sound guy, C.J. Drumeller, asked if Natalie could go upstairs and tell everyone up there to stop talking, because he was picking up a bunch of voices on the mic. But when she went upstairs…there was only one person there, and they weren’t making any noise. Spooky stuff. C.J. also picked up some children laughing at one point, when there were no children anywhere near us.”

“The House on Pine Street” is busy making the festival circuit rounds, but the writers and directors are hard at work trying to figure out their next project, “We can’t say much about this next screenplay, just that it’s another horror film, that we’re taking inspiration from The Wicker Man and The Ring (among many other films), and that an entity in the woods plays a very large role in the story.”

For more information on “The House on Pine Street” you can visit the official website here.

The Film is scheduled at the

Starz and Cox  2015 INTERNATIONAL HORROR + SCI-FI FILM FESTIVAL, Phoenix, AZ. Showing on:

 Saturday, March 28th at 3:20PM

Sunday, March 29th at 9:35AM

2015 SONOMA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, Sonoma, CA. Showing on:

 Friday, March 27th at 8:30PM

Saturday, March 28th at 8:30PM