Haunt

Haunt

Starring Katie Stevens, Will Brittain, Lauryn McClain, Andrew Caldwell

Directed by Scott Beck & Bryan Woods

The Story:
Harper (Katie Stevens) is a college student who doesn't like to go out, as she's haunted by nightmares of her abusive father, but is currently in an abusive relationship of her own.  She's convinced by her roommate Bailey (Lauryn McClain) on Halloween to go to a club with two of their fellow roommates, where she meets nice guy Nathan (Will Brittain) and his friend Evan (Andrew Caldwell), who invites the girls to a haunted house, and discover that it's in the middle of nowhere.  Upon entering, they're not really scared until they move deeper and find that the terror is all too real, as they're hunted down and killed by the employees of the haunted house.

The Synopsis:
What happens when you do something so fantastic that you get recognized with awards and accolades that you've co-written one of the best horror movies in recent memory?  For writers/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, apparently you feel like you've reached the pinnacle of what you're capable of doing and relegate yourselves to writing bargain bin by-the-book horror films like "Haunt," which is neither creepy, nor original.  It's sad coming from two of the three men who co-wrote last year's acclaimed "A Quiet Place," but that's where we find ourselves in the current situation.

The film - like many others released around Halloween, such as "Hellfest," "The Houses October Built," and so many others - focuses on six cliched college students who attend a haunted house and find that the terror is real as they're hunted down and killed.  That's it, that's all.  That's all "Haunt" has to offer us, and it makes black licorice taste divine comparatively.  Sure, they try to throw in the old "Strangers" motif of killers killing for the sake of killing, but unlike "The Strangers," they're nowhere near developed as characters - in fact, neither are our hapless heroes, who make every classic horror movie trope mistake you can make so often you'd want to root for the bad guys to help decrease the moron surplus population, if only they were remotely entertaining either.

Personally, spiders and enclosed spaces are two of my biggest fears, and "Haunt" manages to make me laugh at my own phobias as both are utilized in (unintentionally) hilarious ways.  I was hoping at least those moments would give me the chills, but the only chills I got were from the cold room I was in, as I was too comfortable to turn on the heat.  As the students begin dying, the gore amps up, which is the only small shed of positivity I can give for this film, as everything else screams generic cheap horror.

As far as the main cast goes, I can hardly remember their characters' names let alone their real ones, as no one gives anything remotely capable of a serviceable performance, and the script itself tends to shy away from the true horror to focus on the fake.  As the "main girl" Harper, Katie Stevens seems to have been given a more meatier story concerning her growing up, but that's haphazardly thrown to the side in favor of more gore.  She grew up with an abusive father who beat her mother, and now finds herself in an abusive relationship herself that she doesn't seem to want to get out of, and that is the true terror that happens in real life, but it only serves as a blip of the major plot point of the film to allow her abusive boyfriend to possibly redeem himself.  The rest of the cast is forgettable and holds to their typical tropes (the nice handsome lead, the ditzy cousins - at least I think they were cousins, the overweight loudmouth, and so on) and the villains hardly utter a word, but hide behind generic masks that are steps down from the creepier masks that the killers in "The Strangers" wore.  In fact, now that I think about it, you should just watch "The Strangers" instead of this - at least that's terrifying.

The Summary:
Following the line of every other haunted house Halloween attraction film, "Haunt" fails to deliver any thrills or chills as they methodically follow the same pattern of other films before it, reducing it to a mere shell of what could've been.

The Score: D-