
The sitcoms from the past which are pre-recorded in front of the studio audience instead of the laugh track don’t quite appeal to me. But I believe that there are many possibilities within the bottled sitcom concept as long as the concept is not treated as what it usually is the ground that is over and over retried. A good example would be WandaVision, which inverted the concept so convincingly that it became understandable where the style came from. Then there is our vision, in which directors Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kuil adapt the sitcom by spilling a little horror on it – the format you are not used to. Krazy House manages to transform from your run-of-the-mill trailer for the nuclear family into a so-schlocky it’s a fun approach to the survival genre.
Krazy House has it all. The show opens up with a roaring audience and a catchy theme song that helps to set up the madness that will follow in the next episode. Everybody loves both; all of the “actors”, eventually just the actors that perform the characters they are watching in the film without leaving the character during the runtime. They are always playing the Christian nuclear family, both for better, and for worse. The Christians are a cross-knitting father, wannabe worshiper, and a religious figure, Bernie (Nick Frost, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) who wants everyone to participate in his Jesus’ worship; business-oriented mother Eva (Alicia Silverstone, The Lodge, Perpetrator); geek teenage son Adam (Walt Klink, Rabbit Hole, Lieve Mama); and a teenage girl Sarah (Gaite Jansen, Jett, Peaky Blinders) who is obsessed with boys and seeks for attention.
Does the stylized overaction deserve to be forgiven given the playful artistic license that seems to exist at every turn? Certainly, the selection of performance is consistent with the anticipated parameters of such in any television series of this nature. It is at this stage in the narrative that everyone should have their mind screwing back to the beginning where some stick slap humor gets annihilated sometimes by the VHS-type side cut of the actors losing their minds and the mayhem that would ensue. That is just the tip of the iceberg here. However, Eva is injured and has to stay in bed. If the premise was peculiar already, it goes into overdrive when three Dutch workers (Jan Bijvoet, Chris Peters, Matti Stooker) arrive at the doorstep of the Christians. These men, who are supposed to be there to repair the ruptured plumbing of the house, start plundering and wreaking havoc on all the possessions of the Christians. The days flash forward, from Good Friday to Silent Saturday, followed by Easter Sunday.
In the Krazy House poster, it’s easy to see after the half of the movie that Krazy House changes its style from a campy comedy to a bold and absurd one. Sarah is being courted by one of the men, and Adam is being shaped by another into a crack addict who believes in the existence of an alien and only needs a fix. Bernie is now under the spell of a new Jesus (not literally, it is played by Kevin Connolly from Entourage and He’s Just Not That Into You) which makes him even more delusional. Viewers might find themselves laughing about some things more precisely, the shifting families or the shifts of the four of them which are literally stark and throughout the movie. But as with all good horror/comedy, it is unpredictable.
In the end, this is not worth much. There is a slaughtering and then there is a finale that reaches bonkers territory which I find too try-hard. It would have been nice to see it progressively getting wilder as it goes but the very idea just does not quite pan out. Why not have more fun with the sitcom concept, actors playing bigger versions of themselves, or even better, let’s say a live audience was watching? Too many sequences are missed opportunities. This is no dig whatsoever to the cast: there is no evidence that there is uncommitted schtick; every single one of the actors seems to be enjoying it fully. Less of an Easter miracle than a badly executed horror/comedy crossover, Krazy House deserves to be bulldozed and constructed again, this time with more deliberate planning.
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