Last Friday, House IV was on TV. I had seen the first House movie... well, too long ago for me to want to mention it, but since nothing else worth watching was on at the time I kept the tube on this cheesy horror flick.

The plot goes something like this: Burke, a small-time hoodlum, insistently offers to buy his step-brother Roger's old family house, but he won't budge. However, Roger dies in a car accident while his wife, Kelly, is driving. Burke hopes to inherit the property, only it goes to Roger's next of kin, Kelly, who is haunted by guilt; guilt about the accident, about Roger's death (he was put on life support but wasn't going to make it and she signed the papers to pull the plug), and about crippling their daughter Laurel (she was also riding the car and lost the use of her legs). Kelly and Laurel move into the old house, and Kelly starts having unnerving visions and dreams, which build upon her guilt.

When the movie ended, I concluded that it wasn't all that cheesy, and it wasn't really a horror flick.

Not all that cheesy? Yes, because the idea of the wife suffering visions that play on her guilt is an intelligent move, grounding the weirder happenings on a plausible event.

And why do I say this wasn't really a horror flick? First, because there aren't that many scares in it (I can only remember 3 really scary scenes) and, second, by the time the story wraps up it turns out that the supernatural forces at work in the house actually meant to help Kelly and her daughter.

Not that this makes House IV an actual good movie, mind you. The tone is shaky, moving from horror to a kinder type of fantasy. It also has elements that go unnecessarily over the top, like a midget tycoon Burke has dirty deals with.

So here's a proposal for Hollywood: since they make a lot of remakes and retreads, why not remake this little movie that almost got it right? Just hire a good screenwriter who can polish out the story and a director who can stick to a good script instead of trying to "fix it."

Hey, crazier things have happened before. Why not this one?

{Edited on April 17, 2003. Changed "on at that time" for "on at the time", "his step-brother's Roger old family house" for "his step-brother Roger's old family house", and "a kinder kind of fantasy" for "a kinder type of fantasy".}