House of Purgatory

Well, I had initially expected more from this movie. Granted, I hadn't even heard a single word about it prior to finding it by sheer random luck. I picked it up, saw it was a horror movie and decided to give it a chance.

Turned out that the movie wasn't halfway as interesting as the synopsis made it out to be.

The storyline in the movie was straight forward and very easy to follow, but at the same time it was also so simplistic that it felt like director and writer Tyler Christensen was treating the audience as if we had no brain functions. The movie was just horrible staged and felt like it was staggering around on uncertain ground.

The acting in the movie was good, despite the fact that the actors and actresses had so very little to work with in terms of script, plotline and proper characters. However, I can't claim to be able to single any one out as being particularly extraordinary. You get what you would expect here, I suppose.

As for a horror movie, then "House of Purgatory" was frightfully devoid of anything scary or even remotely disturbing. And the movie just trotted onwards at an adequate pace, but not really taking the audience along on any particular thrilling or memorable ride.

I managed to sit through the movie in its entire running length. Was I entertained, well mildly so. Was it a good movie? No, not even by a long shot. Is it a movie that I will watch again? Nope. "House of Purgatory" came and went without leaving as much as a dent in the chassis of the horror genre.

If you enjoy a proper horror movie, then there are far, far better choices readily available within hands reach.

This film starts off as promising. There is some good dialogue and the characters are generally interesting and believable. Then somehow several of the characters are just dropped as our four mains (not necessarily the most interesting of the characters introduced either) decide to ditch their party and go find a haunted house.

Once this happens things slowly start to go downhill, not only does the ditching of these other characters make their scenes at the beginning completely pointless (why not just start at the haunted house?), but it means that things that looked like they were going to come into play later actually don't. So we get stuck with the four leads as they go through this house, and even that can't hold together long.

There is just no pacing in this movie, it builds you up and then lets you down. I did quite like their approach on what is really scary in life, but most of the time it doesn't seem like the characters should really be going through what they are, which again could make sense, but the ending undoes that too. So overall this film feels like it is chasing its own tail, almost as if it had two completely different writers that had completely opposing ideas about what film they wanted to make. There is some good here, but it is buried underneath a pile of confusion and mistaken misdirection.

My quick rating - 5,1/10. We have all heard the rumors of the haunted house that is 5 floors, and if you can make it through all 5 you get your money back. I am sure there are variations of this urban myth and this film revolves around 4 kids that go looking to conquer it. But instead of a typical haunted house they stumble into a house that uses your own secrets from inside to terrify you. A good premise of a movie and to some extent it is well done. Purposely unbelievable and summed up by the great line "i don't think this is a normal haunted house" LOL. The film is more of a psychological type of terror with each overcoming the fears they hide inside. Atypical acting and good use of minimal locations to make the atmosphere seem plausible. I admittedly did enjoy this for what it was, nothing flashy and could have gone a long way with a bit more put into it.

Im with most of the other reviewers- it was an interesting concept and slight twist on the "haunted house" premise. But it seemed to become increasingly non-sensical. Punishing someone for being molested and another for being gay-? Those arent choices, like punishable choices in which one would be punished in a cosmic sense. Also, my understanding of purgatory was it was sort of a "nowhere", whereas this seems more like hell or tartarus. Meh.

The start was as good as any horror film, but somewhere along the way this film lost itself. There are some good scenes in this film, but they lacked to go the distance. Maybe to explain why some of the weird happenings were happening could help. I feel they rushed too quickly into things with leaving much to be desired. About half way through I was still engaged and then I felt they dropped the ball hard. I like far out ideas and things out of the ordinary, obviously I chose to watch this film. Yet with really no attempt to create any sort of understanding of what is going on, it became disappointing. One of those moments where it ends and your sitting there thinking what crap. Not left thinking or wondering about it in a good thought provoking way. I feel if someone used the same premise, and gave more insight into the what and why of this film they could make a decent film. More time and effort maybe, I can't help to think this film was rushed. As for watching I can say you can definitely skip this one.