'Hitman' And 'The Divide' Helmer Xavier Gens To Direct 'House Of Horror'

French director Xavier Gens first made a name for himself in the horror community with Frontier(s), which premiered as part of the Toronto fest's Midnight Madness program. He diverted into semi-mainstream fare with the very ill-fated adaptation of Hitman, then went back to more hardcore genre fare with The Divide, which hits theaters on January 13, 2012.

Now Gens is set to direct a film that will be produced by James Wan (Saw, Insidious). He's taking over from Javier Gutierrez, who was set to direct earlier this year. The movie is House of Horror, which focuses on "a gruesome crime scene" that is the aftermath of a massacre, and will blend found footage and traditional photography.

STYD announces that Gens will direct. Max La Bella wrote the script, and the film will be the first under Wan's producing partnership with Icon Entertainment.

Here's the synopsis for House of Horror:

The Devil made me do it.The House of Horror is a horror-thriller that centres around a gruesome crime scene. The film is shot with a blend of found footage, interrogation video, news cameras and classical cinematography. The film focuses on the aftermath of a horrific massacre; five college students, brutally murdered inside a decrepit, abandoned home.We are thrown right into the mix as the lead Detective, Mark Lewis, and the police department's psychologist, Dr. Elizabeth Klein, question a suspect. The young man at the centre is John Ascot, bound by handcuffs in a mobile command station. During the interrogation, John explains everything leading up to the deaths of his friends.We discover that they were amateur ghost-hunters, seeking out paranormal phenomenon at the abandoned house believed to be haunted. What started out as a harmless activity turned into something truly terrifying and more than they ever could bargain for. John explains to the police that he isn't responsible for his friends' deaths, but rather, it was the house. He tells them he believes the house is a gateway to hell; a place of concentrated evil.We slowly witness an eerie change in John's demeanour through the course of the movie. Things take a disturbing turn when John hints at the notion that he is possessed by the Devil. Detective Lewis and Dr. Klein are forced to unravel the mystery of how John's friends were murdered. All this leads to a stunning revelation about the man they've been interrogating and a gut-wrenching conclusion.