2012’s House on the Hill is loosely based on the true story of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, two of the worst serial killers to ever haunt California.

Two former Marines who met after Ng placed an advertisement in a survivalist magazine, Lake and Ng lived together on an isolated tract of land.  Underneath their cabin, they constructed a dungeon.  Over the next year, they murdered a countless number of people in their dungeon and buried their remains.  Lake and Ng killed anyone they came across, including several people who had previously been friends of Lake’s.  (Ng apparently didn’t have any friends to kill.)  Though they were officially accused of committing eleven murders, it’s felt that the number was probably much higher.  The two of them videotaped their crimes.  Ng kept a detailed and graphic journal in which he gloated about all of the people who he had killed.  Lake made videos in which he explained his philosophy and expounded on why he felt that he deserved a slave.  Eventually, Lake committed suicide after he was arrested on a shop lifting charge.  Ng fled to Canada but was eventually sent back to the United States.  He currently sits on California’s inactive death row.

In the film, Sonia (Naidra Dawn Thompson) is visited at her home by Paul (Kevin McCloskey), a detective.  Paul explains that he knows that Sonia was the only survivor of Ng and Lake’s rampage.  She survived by being the slave that Leonard Lake desired, filming Ng and Lake’s crimes.  Paul wants to know if Sonia remembers one of Lake and Ng’s victims, a woman named Karianna (Shannon Leade).  Paul says that his clients want to know the circumstances that led to Karianna’s death.  After some hesitation, Sonia tells Paul about her experiences as Lake and Ng’s prisoner.  The film is a mix of black-and-white scenes involving Paul and Sonia and color flashbacks to the crimes of Lake (Stephen A.F. Day) and Ng (Sam Leung).  While Sonia and Karianna are both fictional, the audience is shown footage of the real Leonard Lake, talking about his “philosophy” of life.

At first, it feels a bit tasteless to include the actual footage of the real Leonard Lake but, by the end of the film, I was glad that it had been included because, physically, the real-life Leonard Lake and Charles Ng were both considerably less attractive than the actors who played them in the film.  This is especially true of Charles Ng.  The real life Ng was pudgy and nerdy.  Sam Leung, on the other hand, is undeniably handsome and muscular.  Meanwhile, Stephen A.F. Day has the looks and manner of a friendly social worker so it was good to have actual footage of Lake so that the audience could see that, in real life, Leonard Lake was an overweight, loser incel whose spoke like someone who was desperately trying to convince the listener that he was smarter than he actually was.  (Leonard Lake was the type to stumble over any word that had more than one syllable.)  Probably the best thing that a serial killer film can do is remind the audience that most killers are not erudite and clever.  They’re not Hannibal Lecter.  Instead, they’re losers who are striking out at a world in which they have no hope of succeeding.

As for the film itself, it does capture the horror of being trapped but it’s hard not to feel that it made a mistake by focusing on the fictional Sonia and her conversation with Paul.  Indeed, by having the film narrated by a fictional character who managed to escape, the film does a disservice to to the real victims who weren’t so lucky.  With all of the flashbacks and flashforwards, the narrative itself feels too jumbled to really tell us anything about how or why Lake and Ng not only committed their crimes but how they managed to get away with it for over a year.  In the end, the scariest thing about Lake and Ng is that, if not for that one shoplifting incident, their reign of terror could have continued uninterrupted for even longer than it did.