User reviews

Most of this has been done before; this movie is just another sorting of the various elements. Psychic character, house is an entity itself, paranormal investigators, TV show fantasy gets a dose of what it's been mocking, one character turns into a nutty zombie, etc. But still, this SyFy original really isn't bad.

Events are paced well, and things are revealed in a measured logical manner that maintains interest and fuels the action. The film is just graphic enough to be scary, without the over the top gratuitous blood bath gross-out approach. Somebody actually took time to develop a plot, and the acting is surprisingly decent. Characters are intentionally written as obnoxious, so you never really care gets eliminated. This allows the film to focus more on some innovative ways to knock people off. And you'll need a score card to keep track of the body count.

Not groundbreaking; it's fast-food horror, and you'll likely forget about the movie within two hours or so after viewing. But it's still entertaining enough to get a thumbs up.

House of Bones isn't terrible. That might usually be the best thing I can say about it, but the writers and director do deserve a little credit. The direction is competent and the cinematography is actually impressive for a straight-to-TV feature (meaning it doesn't look like crap or made rushed or hyper-stylized or tinted or whatever). And the script has a few legitimately funny lines of dialog between the baffled crew members on the reality TV show about to film an episode on a haunted-HUNGRY house (must emphasize hungry as it needs to eat). And when it comes time to get to the gore and effects and some of the usual lot of chincy CGI, it's not half-bad. And yet the script does falter when it comes time to really get to internal logic, or to explaining things in exposition, or bringing on the stereotypical a-hole TV show host who comes in the last third of the movie for a lot of useless yammering until his fate comes clear.

But most depressing of all is seeing Charisma Carpenter here. She's never been a Shakespearean thespian or anything, but she's never needed to be. Featured on Buffy and Angel for many of their best seasons, she's always been a solid actress for those and other shows. But here she looks kind of bored and almost a little sad to be having the dubious pleasure of starring in a straight-to-SyFy channel movie. While her fate isn't quite as abysmal as her co-stars on those shows (Amber Benson in Gryphon and Nicholas Brendon in Fire Serpent), it's no great shakes for her character, a psychic and ghost-talker of some kind who should be leaving the house the moment she starts coughing up blood, but stays on for the good (or bad) of those around her in this crazy old piece of property. She doesn't bring the film down, but it's hard for her to do anything to bring up the standard at best so-so at worst stupid and laughable piece of horror drek before her.

I had no particular expectations to the this movie, as it is a Syfy product.

The story seems like rip-off of "House of Haunted Hill" with some elements from "The Ring" tossed in just for good measure, sort of having potential and was not too shabby. The first two-thirds of the movie were rather interesting. Despite it being labelled as a horror movie, there was very little to scare you in it. No major shocks or frights. Nothing creepy or crawly, just some mediocre stuff going on, and with mediocre CGI to accompany it. Then throughout the last third of the movie it all fell to the ground in a most horrible way. The movie became so boring and stupid during the last third part.

As for the cast? Well, some did an alright job, except for Corin Nemec. Wow, he was so miscast for this role. He looked like he was struggling with insects inside his pants. It was physically embarrassing to watch his horrendous performance in this movie. He is semi-alright in comedies, but here it was terrible to behold his acting (or rather, lack thereof).

The setting of the movie was adequate. Would have worked better, if the house had a more dark and brooding appearance and feel to it.

The movie is lukewarm entertainment at best. Don't except any thrills or chills from it though. And don't expect a showcase of awesome effects. If the movie experience was to be compared to a roller-coaster ride, then the ride would have no steep hill or facedown plunges, just a plain leveled ride with little amusement. For a ghost movie, this was pretty lame. It pales in comparison to movies like "13 Ghosts", "House of Haunted Hill", "The Haunting" and such.

The most scared I was, was for concern if I would be able to keep myself awake through the entire movie.

Anyone who watches original SyFy movies knows what to expect - a low budget look, often a poor script and average to below average acting. No one watches an original SyFy film for greatness - it's just shameless entertainment even if that entertainment comes from how bad the movie is and House of Bones is really no different.

Basically, there is a TV show called Sinister Sites that goes to 'haunted' houses, films footage and airs what they found. Up till the latest house, the crew hadn't really found anything spooky and relied on smoke machines and tactics (always shoot at night) to drum up the scare factor and manipulate their nothing findings into an interesting show for viewers to watch. The ratings for the show were dropping so the show added a pretty female psychic to the team (Charisma Carpenter) and also decided that rather than stand behind a green screen and host the show, the host would actually go to the locations as well.

Of course THIS house is not like the others - it's actually HAUNTED. People have been disappearing from this home for years (slaves, prostitutes, children) with the last person disappearing in 1950 - a little boy. Things immediately seem odd when the refrigerator is stocked full of fresh produce/food despite no one having lived there in decades. Then, as the crew starts setting up cameras and devices throughout the house, one of the members goes MISSING! .. and let the craziness ensue.

I can not stress enough that if you want to watch this movie because you like Charisma Carpenter, just pass. Although she's technically in most of the movie, she doesn't really do anything. She's the psychic and she spends most of the movie randomly walking through the house getting vibes saying nothing other than the occasional 'We need to leave' or 'This house is evil' and is often randomly in the background of scenes where the other actors are actually doing/saying things. She doesn't have much dialogue and doesn't really actually do anything beyond what an extra could handle till maybe the last twenty minutes and even then, it's nothing to write home about. Just a fair warning seeing as how this movie is horrible. No reason to watch for her since it's not worth it - trust me.

In the end, you have a stupid, cheaply made SyFy movie that completely falls apart in the past 3rd of the film. It gets too ridiculous and stupid to be taken even partially serious and by the end you will probably be laughing like me at how DUMB it is. Just pass. 3/10

To be as fair as possible, this is not even close to the worst horror movie I have ever seen. But it is done with such a complete and total lack of any sort of spirit or élan that it just doesn't deserve anything other than the lowest possible score.

the acting is bad, but not so laughably bad that it becomes fun to mock and deride. some of the actors are clearly doing their best and you can't be mad or derisive at them for it. they're at least putting in effort where it seems absolutely no one else is.

and indeed, "no effort" would probably be a better theme for this film and title for this review. this film looks and feels like it was written, produced, and directed by someone who has seen exactly 4 movies in their entire life, and 3 of them were about haunted houses.

The ghost hunting stuff is tepidly skimmed upon; we're just supposed to expect and take for granted that they have all this supposed ghost hunting equipment and that it means "spooky ghosts" whenever it makes noise. there's no attempt to even condescend to the audience in explaining one or two of the devices.

the music is nonstop all throughout of some of the most generic, nondescript horror movie background music likely taken from an archive and put together out of some misguided belief that every single scene needs overbearing and blatantly obvious music cues as though this were a silent movie musical. it gets to a point where it's so obnoxiously overdone as to come across as amateurish as a children's horror show episode too cheap to be Goosebumps.

further driving home the "knock-off children's horror show" mood is the actor playing Quentin, the host of the ghost hunting show who doesn't actually interact with the cast much and acts like what a child might imagine an A-list celebrity talks and acts like. They are a one-dimensional character straight out of Power Rangers, but with no comic relief to justify their existence here.

virtually everything else about the film is so boring, generic, and formulaic as to not even warrant attention paid to it. the CG effects are bad and put center-stage so we can clearly see and admire how terrible they are, rather than used sparingly and quickly to enhance a scene. the camera work is flatly "there", as though they set up a camera, turned it on, and that's it. the lighting is as wide open and brightly lit as a sitcom, completely detracting from the mood of a horror movie, and the dialogue is too terrible to be of note, and yet somehow not bad enough to be laughable.

A supposed reality show that does turn real as it progresses. Charisma Carpenter gets the lead billing and plays a sensitive. When she pulls the string of hair out of her mouth it gets a bit much. She won't leave the house because she says she is the only one that can help. The rest of the crew are pretty much unbelievers in the super natural based on their past shows. When they encounter an actually super natural occurrence they start to freak out. Corin Nemec is the shows star, is an egotistical pretty boy who thinks he is the cats meow, and shows up late for the filming and actually plays kind of a bit part. Marcus Lee Brown is the technical guy. The crew wants to bail on the project but the producer won't let them if they want to stay employed. The cute young bank agent played by Stephanie Honore unfortunately returns to the house and gets killed by shattered glass. The remaining crew finally believes and start a search for the source. They should have stayed together. Feeding the well so they can escape turns to be a bad idea. The end is a little unexpected as the producer goes to the dark side and kills everyone else. He continues on as an agent of the house.

To be honest, I was expecting House of Bones to be really bad. But actually, while heavily flawed it is not as bad as other SyFy movies. It is competently made, with decent editing and atmospheric lighting. Effects are kept at minimal and while nothing great when they are there they are much better than those in other SyFy efforts, not as fake-looking. Apart from an irritating performance from Corin Nemec and a disengaged Charisma Carpenter, the acting is about average, with nobody bad but also nobody standing out. The house is well-used and quite creepy, and the well-house twist was pretty nice. However, the sound effects and such are rather obvious sometimes, and the film is further brought down by a cheesy script, really obnoxious and stereotypical characters(especially the TV host), a story that while not dull is predictable, implausible(this may have been avoided if some of the ideas took slower to unfold) and completely let down by a suspense-less, downbeat and utterly ridiculous final third and too many scenes that are rather tame in alternative to unsettling. All in all, better than expected but nothing all that special at the end of the day. 4/10 Bethany Cox

I would simply suggest watching this movie for what it is, a simple low budget horror movie. Everything in this is just correct... not bad or not that good. The story is pretty much classic , a haunted house, but they had a few thing to make it goes out of the ordinary. Special Effects are neither awesome but not bad at all, they are lets say believable. Actors where average at best but you are not watching an horror movie for its acting right? Charisma Carpenter should had less clothes on but well... lol. Seriously i enjoyed this little movie on a late night, it won't remain burned in my head for long, but it was entertaining on the moment.

This is an interesting take on the haunted house motif. Here the house "lives" off the bodies of its victims. Unfortunately this house doesn't take many victims on its own and when it does, its doesn't do as much as it could with them. For example, when a couple of bodies are disposed of within the house, there's an off-screen crunching sound and signs that the house is growing stronger from the nourishment, but these scenes are not that creepy.

Also there are a couple of scenes that are entirely pointless and make little sense overall including a black shadow that roams around in a couple of scenes and tries to look scary but ultimately doesn't do anything.

The film does excel in showing how the house distracts and separates the group even after the protagonists tell themselves not to split up when searching the house. Also, I'm glad to finally see a movie that realizes that eye trauma does not necessarily equate to death.

A couple of lame jump scares aside, this film produces a creepy atmosphere similar to what Rose Red created, but not quite as intense as 1408. Its far from bad, but it could have been a lot better.

this ''film'' (i dare to call it) is so bad when ever a friend brings it up i almost puke the storyline s (aswell as a disappointment) a total mess of various already used scenes.

i rate this move a -14 sorry if you were offended in anyway but i would literally rather be stabbed than watch this.

AND I ENJOY LOW BUDGET FILMS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i was surprised to find this movie was directed by the maker of goblin (yet another TV film fest) and many other bad movies made for TV, if your looking for a good time and a film that states its characters enough so you remember them i highly recommend an entirely different film any even if you have to watch a film from the 1920s. you will highly disappointed if you watch this so just take my advice and watch another horror masterpiece unlike this disappointment.

And not in a good way. It is so bad. So very bad. Charisma Carpenter is disappointing bc you expect more. The rest of the characters are trying, you can tell they really are, but they aren't working with something worthy. I made myself finish it, and it never gets any better. My advice? Run and don't look back. There are better Found Footage horrors out there. Try Grave Encounters.

I'm not sure if they were trying to make a comedy and just failed to make it really funny or if they actually thought they were making a horror film.

It's ALMOST Sharknado bad, but not quite enough to make it as wonderful as Sharknado. The intention gets lost in the execution, so mostly it just ends up... well.... bad. What a shame. With this cast it could have been epically bad and therefore just a lot of fun.

Redbox rental. One technique was used that I thought was original was the perception of the actor compared to what is advanced in the plot! Totally different! I don't want to give it away, you will see what I mean.

I enjoyed the movie! Just got through TRYING to watch "The Vow" (gag, turned off after a respectable 45 minute attempt) and "Killjoyhell" (sorta funny, but after an even more respectable 55 minutes I cut off) but I was actually able to watch this all the way through. CC may of had a little to do with it, but watching the entire movie is a plus recommendation!

Certainly the plot is familiar and it is not scary to the viewer- it is not meant to be. Which means there are no annoying loud sound effect on some stupid event meant to jolt (5 year old's at this point in the movie business). Instead, you watch some jaded show-crew and producer face something unexpected. Some fine women actors top it off.

TV ghost hunters investigate a haunted house, but unlike their previous episodes this one is for real. A former plantation home, the house is alive and has a taste for human blood! Well for a start this thankfully didn't jump on the paranormal activity found footage bandwagon, a very popular - and often annoying - sub genre at the time. Made for TV this movie is at times cheesy and a bit cheap looking, but it does also manage a few decent scares and has some good gore scenes. The acting was OK but the ending wasn't very convincing. Overall this film was an adequate watch, I have sat through many far worse ghost movies than this. Worth 86 minutes if your time.

after watching this i can this is way better than ghost hunters. this movie totally rocks. the plot line does seem kinda weak but the movie really picks up in a lot of other areas. they get to the house that they are investigating and everything seems to go wrong at exactly the same time, the assistant doesn't follow instructions and he does what he wants to do which leads to his disappearance, while the crew go looking for their co-worker others have strange things happen to them like the TV coming on and a commercial that keeps on repeating itself, somehow the house is evil and needs to eat , for years the house has been evil, so it is trying to kill off the inhabitants one by one. a TV reality show-host makes his way to the house only not in time. later the crew discover a well where all the bodies have been disposed of. ah so this is where they all go when the house is hungry, but who is feeding it.