House of Bones

While not actually scary, House of Bones does succeed in giving the audience the impression the house is haunted. I've seen haunted house films before where it wasn't convincing that people couldn't just leave.

Even compared to other films syfy commissioned, the cast's pretty small and there aren't many throwaway characters introduced for body count purposes. The pacing is pretty good actually as one character is taken by the house early leaving the others first confused and later unwilling to leave (assuming the house would even let them).

Incidentally there's also less use of CGI than most syfy-commissioned films. The only real problem with "House of Bones" is its anti-climatic ending.

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

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.

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.

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.