American Horror House

American Horror House (2012)

** (out of 4)

Daria (Alessandra Torresani) is trying to get into a frat house but she soon realizes that the house's owner (Morgan Fairchild) is hiding some dark secrets. Not only are there ghosts haunting the house but there's also a psycho going around killing teens. American HORROR HOUSE might be the first ghost-slasher and for the most part it's mildly entertaining as long as you don't come in expecting some sort of greatness like THE SHINING. I thought the special effects are what really stood out and it's pretty funny to see how much gore and violence can get onto TV these days. It's just funny thinking that the SyFy channel is started to show gorier movies on prime time television than what fans were getting in theaters back in the 80s (when they were also being cut down by the MPAA). There are quite a few memorable death scenes here ranging from one poor slob who gets his tongue ripped out to the highlight scene involving a saw. I'm not going to spoil how the saw effect works but it was quite clever and funny. The performances are about what you'd expect from a movie like this but Torresani was nice in the lead and it was certainly funny seeing Fairchild appear in a film like this. Storywise this thing really isn't too hard to figure out but the material is good enough for a TV movie.

Not entirely avoidable by all means. There is some decent gore both in quality and amount, meaning that there is a fair bit of it and it doesn't look cheap. Some of the death scenes(though maybe there were too many because the horror elements outside of them suffered) are inventive and have an appropriate stomach-churning effect, the one with the saw stood out, while the other standout scene was when the sisters dressed as Sweet Alice Sweet. Morgan Fairchild- still looking amazing, she actually looks younger than she really is- is chilling and seems to be having a great time, by far the best performance of the movie. That is saying a fair bit actually because the acting generally ranged from overwrought to bland, in short while to be expected it was not particularly great. You don't get to know the characters either, in some instances they get under your skin(the two bitching sisters) or are not on screen long enough to make an impression. The dialogue doesn't flow very well, makes little effort to develop or explain things, so a lot of American Horror House felt very undercooked from a writing standpoint, and the bitching was so overdone that you wanted the characters doing the bitching to shut up fast. Story-wise, there is no better news, some of it drags but other parts felt improvised and erratic. There are an almost complete lack of horror and mystery elements, which hurt the movie significantly. The horror was predictable and atmosphere-less(sure the death scenes were gruesome but those aside there's not much to the horror). And it would have helped if the ghosts were more believable, you don't even believe that they are ghosts but instead it's oddly reminiscent of the Chamber of Horrors section in Madame Tussaud's but much less scary. American Horror House doesn't do well as a mystery either, more suspense, atmosphere and less predictability will have helped it and also that it wasn't so obvious to us too early who the person behind the killings was. There are cheaper movies out there than American Horror House, but the choppy editing, too bright lighting(one external review likened it to Hallmark/Lifetime quality and that is apt here, often it doesn't feel like it's a movie about horror houses and ghosts), and old-school effects that sometimes were okay but looked at other times comparatively dated to the rest of the movie's look cannot be ignored here. All in all, you can do with worse but American Horror House is one of those once-seen, quickly disposable movies(personal opinion of course). 3/10 Bethany Cox

SyFy takes the more serious route by taking on the sub-genre of paranormal activity, offering "American Horror House" - A movie that had an interesting idea going for it, but fell flat with literally all the needed elements to lead itself to success, disappointing on multiple levels.

The story of this film was off-beat. It felt as if it was mixed up, going in many, many directions all over the place, making it difficult to follow at points, and becoming slightly confusing with the films decisions regarding its plot story. For what we got, however; a bunch of college kids are getting ready for a huge party, the sorority sisters, of which are preparing for this party, doing so, they uncover more, and more sinister secrets on this house, and it's past. One minute we get a bunch of dead ghosts pretending to be live with one character, the next we have these girls terrifying another group of girls in order to fulfill tasks. Once again, it's hard to follow as the film poorly carries they're plot out. The acting in this movie, also tended to get annoying as the characters these actors were given were stuck-up jerks that never exactly knew when to shut up - leading to the disliking of these characters; we as the audience honestly could ever care less about these recycled characters, the movie gave absolutely no story to literally any of them, it literally threw a bunch of these characters on a screen, and expected the audience to enjoy it. No. In fact, half the time, us audience will get annoyed by these character, boosting our wantings on them just dying already so we'd finally get them to shut up. The characters, on top of that were literally just your typical, throw- away clichéd characters of which we've seen billions of times before. Not even the ghost / paranormal enemy characters could hold their grip on anything unique, offering clichéd dialog, overall character execution, etc. There is ONE good factor to this film, however. The plot story wasn't bad. The idea of a ghost taking upon the weak, and trapping them seemed like a good, solid, fresh-like idea; but sadly. Con's defeated the pro's in this battle.

To wrap things up, this is a typical SyFy throw-away. There were loads of elements that could've easily been avoided, but instead, were faced head on in this flick. You have loads of clichés, from characters, to execution, to many, to all ideas. The film has a neat little idea, but as said before is completely evaded due to it's many mistakes. The pacing was slow, and boring. The story execution was terrible, and even confusing as it throws everything at the audiences' face. I'd recommend this if your looking for something to watch, and your utterly bored. If not, watch something else, and skip this.

Released to TV in 2012 and directed by Darin Scott, "American Horror House" (aka "Sorority Horror House" or "Paranormal Initiation") chronicles events during Halloween at a haunted Southern sorority house. Morgan Fairchild plays the housemother. Alessandra Torresani & Salina Duplessis play initiates for the sorority. Dave Davis is on hand as the male protagonist while Gralen Bryant Banks appears as a private detective.

The low ratings for this movie are hilarious. What were these critics expecting with a Syfy horror flick about a sorority house? For what it is, it delivers the goods. It's got a compelling story, plenty of low-budget gore and a buffet of good-looking women. The pic's generally serious, but with a sense of humor (e.g. the veteran sorority girls). Sure, it's cartoony, but it was made-for-TV, after all, and it scores high marks on the female front.

The film runs 87 minutes and was shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The script was written by Anthony C. Ferrante.

GRADE: B-

Attempting to pledge a new sorority during a Halloween party, the new pledges find the event used as a recruiting session by the ghostly house-mother suffering under a malicious curse to possess the house and must find a way to stop it from going through.

This one here was actually quite an entertaining and exceptionally fun entry. The main element of the many pluses that comes up here is the fact that this one uses a near-continuous amount of ghost action which keeps this one moving along at such a brisk pace and never really lets it up. The early ghost shots of the girl haunting the cellist in the practice room and appearing to the rejected pledge are pretty chilling scenes and definitely set up some creepy atmosphere when mixed with the actions of the cop investigating the disappearances inside the sorority to the girls going through the initiation ceremonies at the same time. These manifestations of the ghosts are more than enough to provide a dark atmosphere here that's based off the haunting encounters being quite fun while also giving this one some solid supernatural basis. This makes the shots of the ghosts possessing the different artifacts and chasing them for great moments here featuring the attack on the group in the attic where the bear costume continues the attack, the final ghost ambush on the detective and the different visions of the past tragedies from the child's murders to the original deaths of the different figures in the house's history really gather up into formidable and enjoyable scenes. Finally, the main segments where they go around and invade the party, whether through ghostly temptation or simply appearing solely to those aware of their presence but remaining to the other party guests, is incredibly fun and definitely lives up to it's spectacle showpiece by setting the turning and corrupting in motion as well as providing this with the thrilling and action of the chases along the house where it finally gives them the key to overcome them. When mixed together with the rather gory deaths that are thankfully not CGI but actual prosthetics, there's a lot to like here. These here are enough to hold off the few small problems with this, starting with the lame point here involving the cursed-to-remain storyline which certainly doesn't need to be there and is introduced so late as to be an afterthought. There's the usual bad CGI, but overall this one wasn't nearly atrocious and remained quite enjoyable.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Language, Brief Nudity and drug use.