Haunt Season

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 the Realm of Terror, a haunted house at a Carnival, the performer Taylor (Ana Dragovich) is murdered by a maniac wearing costumer. She vanishes and her colleagues believe she has flaked out, and the manager Bradford (Stephen Kristof) replaces her by the wannabe actress Matilda (Sarah Elizabeth), who has a powerful scream, to be scalped many times during the show. Soon, other performers are murdered by the maniac, who plans a crime spree on the All Hallows Eve.

"Haunt Season" (2024) is a very bad slasher, with a poor storyline and awful dialogs. The way Stephen Kristof speaks is very difficult to be understood, at least for a viewer not native in English. The gore is intense but with no character development. The best scene is the funny sequence at the bowling, when the manic Danny makes the people cheer for him to kill Matilda. Indeed, it is the best moment of this forgettable movie. My advice is, if you are not cast, crew, member of the family or friend of them, do not waste your time watching this flick. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): Not Available.

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.

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.