With a title like House on the End of the Street you might be tricked into thinking this will contain the grindhouse sleaziness of such fare as The Last House on the Left or Last House on Dead End Street - it doesn't and its PG-13 rating is obvious due to most of the violence occurring off screen. Despite being sold as a supernatural type flick in its commercials, this is really just a solid teen oriented thriller that doesn't demand a lot of brainpower, delivers a few okay twists, and gets decent acting from its cast. It's the kind of movie that'll have an adequate opening weekend and quickly disappear generally only being remembered as "that movie the girl from Hunger Games was in between sequels".

Things start off on a somber tone as an obviously disturbed teenage girl proceeds to beat her parents to death with a hammer during a thunderstorm. We flash forward to four years later and the arrival of single mom Sarah (Elisabeth Shue) and her daughter Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) who've managed to rent a nice country house for cheap due to it being next door to the scene of our opening murders.

To make matters worse, it looks like the dead couple's estranged son, Ryan (Max Thieriot), has taken up residence next door which definitely doesn't sit well with most of the town's residents who make him feel unwelcome and criticize his hermit ways. One night, after a party that goes wrong, Elissa ends up getting a ride home from Ryan leading to them forming a friendship.

Mom doesn't approve, the two sort of start falling for each other, and Ryan has a secret room in his basement where he keeps his brain damaged, murdering sister. This leads to various scenes of her escaping, a bunch of attempts at jump scares, and a few of the aforementioned acceptable twists on the way to a cat and mouse finale.

Originally announced to be filmed in 2003, House at the End of the Street accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do. It's nothing we haven't seen in the past, it doesn't stray far off the teen thriller path, and it's generally forgettable; but it's a perfectly entertaining time and never overstays its welcome. Sure, director Mark Tonderai (Hush) does his best to squeeze some suspense out of the script, including using pitch blackness and flashlight flares in the final reel, but this never really surprises in that way.

Coming off an Oscar nomination for Winter's Bone and being cast as the bow wielding Katniss in the immensely popular Hunger Games franchise, Lawrence doesn't get much of a chance to stretch her acting muscles here, but she's still an okay heroine and plays pretty well off Shue who doesn't get to do much more than be the strict parent who's always working late - apart from a scene where she gets drunk after inviting Ryan over for dinner and forbids him to see Elissa. Thieriot also gives a solid turn as our misunderstood outcast before getting to show some menace in the final third.

I have to admit a soft spot for certain flicks that fall into this sub-genre. I enjoy the silliness that is The Good Son simply for the fact that Macaulay Culkin tried to distance himself from his Home Alone fame by acting evil (and the priceless "Mr. Highway" moment), I admit to being entertained by the Alicia Silverstone Fatal Attraction-lite fare that is The Crush, and Drew Barrymore probably wants to distance herself from Poison Ivy. It's the type of movie that's cheap to make and appeals to its target audience of (mostly) teenage girls. How else can you justify the existence of stuff like Swimfan and the ridiculous Mark Wahlberg-Reese Witherspoon dreck that is Fear?

House at the End of the Street doesn't quite reach the levels of those aforementioned films, but I didn't mind my time with it, found it moved at a quick enough pace, and enjoyed it for what it is: a straight-forward thriller only worth watching on a lazy Sunday afternoon. (Chris Hartley, 9/26/12)

Directed By: Mark Tonderai.
Written By: David Loucka.

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Elisabeth Shue, Max Thieriot, Gil Bellows.