A horror maestro from Wilmington

Horror film geeks, don't abandon hope: There is a cure for Paranormal Activity-overdose.

His name is Ti West. He hails from Wilmington.

And soon, he'll be your hero too.

West is the writer-director of the far superior minimalist suspenser House of the Devil, a retro-'80s gem that opened in October to rave reviews.

Sadly, it was eclipsed at the box office by Paranormal, which came out just a month earlier and which captured the media's attention with vengeance. (Guess which flick went on to gross $107,918,810 and which $101,215?)

House, released Tuesday on DVD by Dark Sky Films (www.darkskyfilms.com), has all the virtues of Paranormal but none of the drawbacks.

Like Paranormal, it scares the daylights out of the most jaded horror fan, with a real story and rounded, likable characters.

House stars Jocelin Donahue as doe-eyed college coed Samantha, who is so desperate to get away from her sex-crazed roomie that she'd do anything to save up for her own pad - including take a babysitting job from an overly solicitous, creepy professorial type named Mr. Ulman, played to perfection by Tom Noonan (Manhunter).

Trouble is, there's no baby in Ulman's creaky, secluded Victorian house.

Ulman and his wife (Mary Woronov) are Satanists who need a virgin to sacrifice - but they're fresh out.

Like the '70's and '80's classics that it's meant to conjure up - John Carpenter's Halloween, Peter Medak's The Changeling, Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now - House stays away from the blood-and-gore-gorged method of thrill-making familiar from the Saw series.

There is blood, but you have to wait through more than an hour's worth of excruciating suspense to see it.

At 29, West already has four features to his credit.

A graduate of the Tatnall School who describes his background as "normal, suburban, middle class," he says he didn't spend his youth yearning to make films.

"That was just not an option for us," he says on his cell phone from the Sundance Film Festival. "If you told people 'I want to make movies,' they'd just think, 'That's crazy. Someone else does that!' "

It all changed when West saw two low-budget horror classics, Peter Jackson's Bad Taste and Sam Raim's Evil Dead.

"That's when I thought, maybe I can do this," he says. "Making a Spielberg film? That seemed like a total mystery, but with [Bad Taste], I could see Peter Jackson standing on that rock taking that shot. I could wrap my head around it."

West's epiphany didn't go down well with others. "It perplexed everyone, from my friends, to my family . . . even my guidance counselor," he says.

After a slew of frantic days and nights spent with college guides, West found himself at the New York School of Visual Arts in Manhattan - and an apprenticeship with New York indie film maestro Larry Fessenden, director of the enviro-thriller The Last Winter.

As West tells it, one of his teachers, Wendy and Lucy director Kelly Reichardt, introduced him to Fessenden because West was the only one of her students who was familiar with Fessenden's 1999 vampire movie, Habit.

"He was very precocious," Fessenden says of West, who would bring the established director his school films.

"I told him he should bring me a feature once he graduated," Fessenden says. "Sure enough, two days after graduation, he stopped by . . . and he pitched me a couple of different films."

Fessenden financed West's first film, The Roost (2005), a rabid-vampire bat epic shot almost entirely in a barn. ("I knew someone who had a farm in Unionville, Pa.," says West.)

The film received good notices and launched West's career.

"I found out that if you are successful doing horror, people will give you money to do more," he says impishly.

Fessenden also backed West's sophomore effort, Trigger Man.

Shot in Wilmington's Alapocas Woods Park for $15,000 over seven days with one camera, a cast of three and a crew of three, Trigger Man is a startling suspense thriller about three hunters picked off one by one by an unseen sniper.

Like Gus Van Sant's Elephant, its stark naturalism and matter-of-fact treatment of murder is jarring, disturbing even to the most jaded viewer.

Fessenden says West's ability to make "personal, auteurish films" is matched by his "awareness of the demands of the market."

West's first attempt at making a more commercial film - Cabin Fever 2, the anticipated sequel to Eli Roth's breakout film - didn't end well.

"I wanted to create this outrageous, John Waters version of a horror film," he says. Producers apparently disagreed and it went straight to video. (It's due out on DVD Feb. 16 from Lionsgate.)

No matter, says West, whose next flick is a ghost story named The Innkeepers.

"I will fight to the death for a movie because it might be the last one I make," he says. "I mean I'm only qualified to make movies or do manual labor."