"Nice house, too bad we can't stay," said no one ever in this kind of movie. Yeah, okay, I get that their friend who they dared to go to the steps of the haunted house is missing and they want to save him. That's what script-writers call The Crucible, the reason the characters can't just find something else to do. My biggest problem with this buncha dudes is that I didn't care about any of them. Not even the guy they dared to walk up the steps. Then there were the standard creepy movie elements: the little crying girl with her back turned and oh,no! When she is touched on the shoulder and turns, SHE'S REALLY SOME KIND OF MONSTER!!! Whoa Nellie! How frightening! Then the creepy whispering that not everyone in the buncha dudes can hear. Then the naked lady rises from the bathtub and embraces one of the dudes, but then transforms into the lady who killed all her kids in that house a hundred years ago. Then the wall made of latex with spooky hands reaching out to passersby on the stairs. Was it an homage to Frighteners or Nightmare on Elm Street or just a cliché? And the unbreakable windows and the scary mirrors. And the end sequence where everyone is dead and somehow now appears in the 100 year old picture in the hallway...great idea, or at least it was when Kubrick used it at the end of the Shining. Here, it falls a bit flat. All of it falls flat.
Best part of the movie is the opening title sequence showing the credits embedded in the elements of a one hundred year old mass murder scene that is unfolding slowly before our eyes,,with an ink bottle quivering in the air where is has been knocked off the desk by the dead man who was doing post mortems on a group of children, blood dripping leisurely from their tiny bodies as a woman's hand reaches into the frame to one by one close their vacant eyes. I loved this sequence and recommend watching it at least twice before shutting off the rest of the move.
The actors seemed earnest about their roles, so I can't really fault them. But who wants to watch a haunted house movie that you've seen better versions of a hundred times? Well, I guess I did, but I only sacrifice my time so others don't have to.
Best part of the movie is the opening title sequence showing the credits embedded in the elements of a one hundred year old mass murder scene that is unfolding slowly before our eyes,,with an ink bottle quivering in the air where is has been knocked off the desk by the dead man who was doing post mortems on a group of children, blood dripping leisurely from their tiny bodies as a woman's hand reaches into the frame to one by one close their vacant eyes. I loved this sequence and recommend watching it at least twice before shutting off the rest of the move.
The actors seemed earnest about their roles, so I can't really fault them. But who wants to watch a haunted house movie that you've seen better versions of a hundred times? Well, I guess I did, but I only sacrifice my time so others don't have to.