A group of young adults go into a haunted house to find ghosts/conduct a séance. We've seen it done a dozen times in movies.
This one is slightly different. The action picks up after the expected slauther of those young adults as a police detective interviews the lone survivor.
The film is a combination police procedural, shaky-cam recovered footage, haunted house/demonic possession horror. Except it doesn't really give enough in any area to really pull it off. The shaky-cam footage is sort of worn out by this point to be scary. Plus, the over-reliance on jump-scares may provide a cheap little startle but do little to advance the plot. I was actually laughing at some of the ways they depict the police investigation. "Get more freezers for those hard drives!" And this film really didn't know whether it was a haunted house story or a demonic possession story. Before the séance--when the demon would have been summoned--all sorts of scary stuff was happening. Was the demon doing this? Was it ghosts? Who knows! It's never explained!
And while the twist at the end gives you a "hmm, interesting" feeling. It is only a matter of a few minutes of thinking that you realize that it's dumb. Spoilers: So, the demon, in order to escape his prison must inhabit a "pure soul" while also killing everyone who was involved in the ritual to set him free? All right ... so that pretty much means only an unborn child can be the host. Sucks for the demon if they all show up without a pregnant woman, right? But let's back up. The demon gets John to go around killing everyone ... but for some reason he doesn't kill Bryan, and Bryan runs away, steals a truck, kills or attacks a gas station attendant and then shouts really loudly into the radio to mess with the demon ... so that the police will shoot him? Uh ... okay.
And the demon could only be set free once the pure soul travels beyond the seal (kinda like the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones, eh?) So ... the demon then hid Michelle in a hidden crawl space so that the cops would have to spend several hours looking for her? What if they never found her? What if Michelle and her unborn child died in that crawlspace? Sucks for that demon, right?
The more you think about this movie, the more you see how easy it is to pick apart. The whole concept of demonic possession in a haunted house has been done before, and with a far simpler plot. I mean, Night of the Demons was a campy 80's horror (and a rather bad remake in the 2000s), but it at least made sense--it didn't try to be too clever.
Anyway, this is on Netflix right now (October 2020), so if you've done the bigger, better films, give this a watch ... don't expect much, though.
The film is a combination police procedural, shaky-cam recovered footage, haunted house/demonic possession horror. Except it doesn't really give enough in any area to really pull it off. The shaky-cam footage is sort of worn out by this point to be scary. Plus, the over-reliance on jump-scares may provide a cheap little startle but do little to advance the plot. I was actually laughing at some of the ways they depict the police investigation. "Get more freezers for those hard drives!" And this film really didn't know whether it was a haunted house story or a demonic possession story. Before the séance--when the demon would have been summoned--all sorts of scary stuff was happening. Was the demon doing this? Was it ghosts? Who knows! It's never explained!
And while the twist at the end gives you a "hmm, interesting" feeling. It is only a matter of a few minutes of thinking that you realize that it's dumb. Spoilers: So, the demon, in order to escape his prison must inhabit a "pure soul" while also killing everyone who was involved in the ritual to set him free? All right ... so that pretty much means only an unborn child can be the host. Sucks for the demon if they all show up without a pregnant woman, right? But let's back up. The demon gets John to go around killing everyone ... but for some reason he doesn't kill Bryan, and Bryan runs away, steals a truck, kills or attacks a gas station attendant and then shouts really loudly into the radio to mess with the demon ... so that the police will shoot him? Uh ... okay.
And the demon could only be set free once the pure soul travels beyond the seal (kinda like the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones, eh?) So ... the demon then hid Michelle in a hidden crawl space so that the cops would have to spend several hours looking for her? What if they never found her? What if Michelle and her unborn child died in that crawlspace? Sucks for that demon, right?
The more you think about this movie, the more you see how easy it is to pick apart. The whole concept of demonic possession in a haunted house has been done before, and with a far simpler plot. I mean, Night of the Demons was a campy 80's horror (and a rather bad remake in the 2000s), but it at least made sense--it didn't try to be too clever.
Anyway, this is on Netflix right now (October 2020), so if you've done the bigger, better films, give this a watch ... don't expect much, though.