Finally the fourth film in the series and, in welcoming back original star William Katt, this had to have some resemblance to a sequel where the last two had failed – or so I thought. The only actual resemblance is in fact the return of Katt as Roger Cobb, only to die very early in the film. There are several elements from that first film that are missing, the original house for one and, more importantly, no mention of the horror that faced the occupants the first time around. Cobb’s wife actually states that “Roger thought the house was magical� - magical? Perhaps I am being cynical and perhaps my memory of the first film is fading, but what happened to their son? They strangely enough have a teenage daughter now. I also can’t for the life of me remember a devious stepbrother, but low and behold he is pivotal in this film.

The story, while avoiding any similarity to previous efforts, is thus. While returning home after a visit to the house that means so much to them, Roger, his wife Kelly and daughter Laurel are in a car accident. Roger is killed and Laurel is now wheelchair bound. Kelly decides to move into the house with her daughter as a way of being close to the now dead Roger. Roger’s stepbrother is pressuring Kelly to sell the house, but Kelly is reticent. Strange things start to happen to Kelly, she hears noises, her shower starts spraying blood and she even fights with a pizza. She asks advice from a local Indian who tells her that the house is built on an historical Indian site and it must be protected.

As stated earlier there are too many things missing to be able to classify this as a sequel, but that is actually the one constant in this series. The sad thing in this case is the lack of horror, scenes such as showers that spray blood are old hat. The only scene worth classing as remotely scary is the pizza fight and that is more laughable than scary. The collection of bad guys is also ridiculous. The bumbling Mafia style baddies reminded me of Home Alone and the main bad guy is just an absolute joke. Whether these were added to try and recreate the humour achieved in previous films is a possibility, but regardless it all fails miserably.

Overall this film is like the others before it – watchable. It bears only a slight resemblance to the original House, which is the only advantage it has over House II and House III. Having viewed all films in the series as individual films rather than a series then this is of the same quality as the others. House is by far the best as is usually the case with originals and perhaps if the producers had stuck to that same concept rather than deviating as much as they did then this could have been a much better series.

The one saving grace for this film is the transfer, as it is by far the best of the four films. It is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is 16x9 enhanced for those with widescreen capability. Picture is quite sharp throughout and doesn’t contain the amount of softness that was quite evident in prequels. Colours are strong with very good detail and grain is not a problem. Film artefacts are absent, which is surprising as the previous films did have them in varying degrees. Shadow detail is also strong and there is no sign of aliasing. Overall the best transfer so far.

Audio is again supplied in a choice of English Dolby Digital 2.0 and 5.1. As was the case with the soundtracks on the previous releases, the 5.1 mix is much louder but better than the 2.0 mix. Again the 5.1 mix is a case of bad use of separation with directional effects coming from all speakers at once rather than the one speaker where the event is happening. Apart from this annoyance it is generally a decent track with no synch problems to speak of. There is one glitch at 44:48 during the shower scene where the sound just vanishes. Although there is no dialogue at the time it is still very obvious. Overall this track is on a par with the House III track and is more than sufficient for this film.

The same extras appear on this disc that are on all the others. There are two teaser trailers, for House II and House IV, and these again are not selectable and must be viewed when first playing the disc.

Overall House IV is not the best film in the series, but each has their good and bad points. This one seemed to be planned to follow in the actual way of a sequel before a change of mind, for what reason we will never know. Whether this film holds up as an individual film is also debatable and I sense the producers were using the House name for this reason. After all, when the previous two films have also used the House name to gain an audience while bearing no resemblance to the original, then why not?