Experimentation is essential to filmmaking, but not all experiments are successful.Steffen HaarsandFlip van der Kuil’sDutch action-horror comedyKrazyHouseis a catastrophic flop.What should have been a 20-minute Adult Swim special is dragged into a 90-minute absurdist borethat attempts to roast corny 90s sitcoms, religious zealotry, and sunshiny dispositions. It’s a shame because there’s genuine ambition behind the uncanny setup of a studio-audience program morphing into scathing darkness à laKevin Can F**k Himself— but Haars and Kuil churn their ideas into an unfunny, sensory-numbing, downright affronting tonal slurry.
What Is ‘Krazy House’ About?
Nick Froststars as Bernard ‘Bernie’ Christian, an obsessively religious homemaker who wears self-knitted sweaters bearing Christian symbols and lives by God’s code. He’s also the star of a sitcom calledKrazy House, which the film presents as if we’re watching on our hometown boob tubes. Bernie’s breadwinning wife Eva (Alicia Silverstone) works her ambiguous corporate gig, daughter Sarah (Gaite Jansen) desperately wants a boyfriend, and son Adam (WaltKlink) chooses science over theology.Their household is an exaggeration ofFamily MattersandFull Houselife lessons, while Bernie absorbs the jester-like qualities of a Steve Urkel, complete with an audience-echoing catchphrase: “Oh gosh, what a mess!”
Central conflicts arise from Bernie’s inability to empower and support his family. Faint attempts at humor stem from Bernie’s out-of-his-league wife stomaching his “invention” of scrubbing brushes on his shoes or Adam’s mockery of God’s will as Bernie responds with bible verses — until the Russians show up. The hapless and uncoordinated Bernie destroys his family’s kitchen, and almost immediately, a trio of grunty Eastern European workers rings the doorbell.Those trained by Adult Swim’s deconstructions of familiar television tropes know something isn’t right. That becomes apparent as Pjotr (Borgman’sJan Bijvoet) and his sons — Dmitri (Chris Peters) and Igor (Matti Stooker) — start to demolish Bernie’s entire house without any protest from the lord-loving pushover.
‘Krazy House’ Doesn’t Have a Compelling Story to Balance Its Absurdity
Krazy Housemistakes stupidity for satire, down to Frost’s horrendous American accent pushed past Bernie’s blocky dentures (story reasons). Set design models afterMarried With ChildrenandEverybody Loves Raymond, but Bernie’s antics are ten times dumber than anything Al Bundy did or Ray Barone said. Haars and Kuil inflate sitcom silliness into a nonsensically useless multiplier, which is the point, but that doesn’t mean it has to be funny. Frost has made a career out of dark comedies, both violent and terrifying — but his leading role as Bernie Christian is a comedic black hole. The concept’s inability to be anything more than senseless shock-value slop is inescapable, rendering actors caught in the live show’s purgatorial episode structure performatively impotent.
Haars and Kuil interrupt early scenes with subliminal shots of a blood-covered Bernie, teasing the rampage to come later. It’s the Adult Swim of it all, trying to mess with the audience likeCasper Kelly’s stealth yule log horror film — or likeQuentin Dupieux’s commentative take on midnight movies,Rubber. The problem is that Haars and Kuil don’t have a compelling story to balance their in-your-face blasphemy or the Russians' lock-and-loaded home invasion brutality.Krazy Housenever establishes itself as an enjoyable sendup of generational TV icons, so the graphic body horrors and offputting animal abuse hit like an insult. Storytelling is wreckless and offensive for a laugh, failing the first rule of exploitation filmmaking — you better have something to say. Haars and Kuil push boundaries for the sake of watching your reactions, fluent in the wasteful cinematic vocabulary of — excuse my language — edgelord bullshit.
‘Krazy House’ Just Wants to Provoke Without Any Purpose
On paper,Krazy Housesounds like the brand of extreme weirdness that works for me. I love how the aspect ratio changes from television formats to widescreen dimensions, ditching accents, and washed-out studio lighting. In practice, I was checking my watch after an excruciating five minutes. Haars and Kuil string a series of horrible events together for no reason other than because they find them … amusing? Bernie’s hallucinated conversations with Jesus (Kevin Connolly), “gum baby” pregnancies, and self-harm are all played for laughs, and I get that’s the point — sitcoms often softened life’s hardships – butKrazy Housedoesn’t have a single subversive bone in its foundation. Its filmmakers aren’t provocateurs; they’re children who learned how to curse for the first time. Nothing makes sense; they just want to stack a body count and offend the innocent.
Krazy Houseis “krazy” for all the wrong reasons. Haars and Kuil want to be theseCecil B. Dementedtype industry anarchists, but their execution is as impactful asTom Six’s latterThe Human Centipedesequels. There’s nothing revolutionary about the film’s revulsions or exceptional about its obscenities. Even at the lord’s runtime of 90 minutes,Krazy Housedepletes its core gimmick in a matter of seconds. Nothing about the third act’s shootouts and even poorer comedic tastes become something noteworthy, devolving into a second coming ofToo Many Cooksinfamy without angels rejoicing. It’s the epitome of going down swinging, and while you can’t fault anyone for trying, you can shake your head in disapproval.
Krazy House
Krazy House is out of its mind for all the wrong reasons, failing its satirical approach to turning American sitcoms into horror comedy with heavy Adult Swim influences.
Krazy House: In a comedic turn of events, Bernie, the father of a nostalgic ’90s sitcom family, discovers that the Russian workers renovating their house are actually fugitives. Bernie must take charge to protect his family, leading to a series of humorous and unexpected situations as he attempts to navigate the chaos.
Krazy Houseis now available to rent on VOD services in the U.S.
Rent on Amazon
