Haunt Season

Behind the Screams: Haunt Season Blends Drama and Gore in a Haunted House Setting

I enjoyed Haunt Season for several reasons. The characters are likable and well-developed, with realistic social issues like financial stress and job worries. Watching actors and makeup artists prep for the haunted house is intriguing. Though the film has well-crafted gore, it leans more toward drama than horror, and isn't particularly scary. For those looking for a true scare, Hell House LLC does a better job delivering thrills. Still, Haunt Season stands out with its unique approach to haunted attractions, blending character depth with a backstage look that adds authenticity.

Watched this because I knew the director from their PoPs series, which was great. Several of the actors from that also showed up here, unsurprisingly, and I liked to see them again.

This was a fun halloween film! I did not realize it was going to be literally haunted house carnival-based, which is a great setting for a movie about people getting killed, without it being really eerie or horrific. And it allows for a lot of kitchy props, which makes it budgetfriendly to make I imagine.

I felt the music and sound effects could have used more love, but I liked the actors' performances! Especially the killer was great, I felt like I knew them from something else, some bigger production.

I'll be showing this to my fiancee, who isn't into horror but I think she could appreciate a halloweeny slasher :)

In theory a haunted attraction is the perfect place for a slasher to ply his trade because no one would notice a real masked psycho stabbing people amid the scary performers and corn-syrup gore. Although the subgenre exploring the premise is relatively recent, it seems like it's already exhausted its possibilities; this effort feels a bit stale. It's not inventive enough to offset the low budget or the predictable plot. The dialogue and characterizations seem reasonably authentic (or at least they're not distractingly inauthentic), but the characters aren't compelling enough to engender much interest. It's a forgettable one-time watch if you can stream it for free, and nothing more.

Even though it had a lot of bad reviews, I had to give this movie a chance just for the fact that it is set in a haunted attraction. This blossoming horror sub-genre hasn't produced very many great films yet, and maybe there won't be any more besides Hell House, but I will watch all of them I can find. Any time the action takes place in some kind of theme park or elaborate haunt, I will want to see how it turned out visually. I thought Haunt Season was one of the better efforts that has used this device. The characters were only midly interesting, but it was enough to make me want to see what happened to them. I do think it was pretty funny that one of the fake reviewers actually titled his post "Hard to believe this is an Independant film!" No one will NOT believe that. But I thought there was a level of effort visible that made me believe that this was made by people who really wanted to give us something fun, and I appreciate that.

I genuinely wanted to enjoy Haunted Season. The trailer promised a solid horror experience within its subgenre-perhaps not groundbreaking, but at least something entertaining. Sadly, the film itself turned out to be a letdown. Poor directing, cringeworthy dialogue, and acting straight out of a high school drama class completely sank any hopes I had.

Admittedly, the cinematography was decent-at least someone on set seemed to know which direction to point the camera. Initially, I suspected this was an earnest attempt by recent film grads, so I was prepared to overlook some rookie mistakes. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the director is in his 40s with twenty years of filmmaking experience behind him. If this is his best after two decades, perhaps a career change should be considered.

Ultimately, Haunted Season isn't frightening or engaging-it's just disappointing. Save yourself the trouble and find a film made by someone who still enjoys making movies.