SPOILER WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
Synopsis: The makers of
Snakes on a Train,
Transmorphers,
Abraham Lincoln Vs. Zombies,
The Da Vinci Treasure,
Alien Vs. Hunter, and so so much more, bring you a movie that as far as I can tell is
not a direct rip-off of anything specific. In it, a group of twenty-something teens (yeah, that's a thing in movies), one of which is a tour guide at the Whaley House (an actual house in San Diego, which the movie is not filmed at, and which they're being sued for defaming), all go into the Whaley House at night after being told not to, and bring along a famous psychic because why not? Enraged spirits ensue.
Scariness Type: I jumped once! I forget why now, but hey, it happened. So yeah, it's a haunted house movie, with your usual jump scares and lurking horror.
Rating: 2/5 EMF Meters.
Body Count: 9
Fun Fact: My favorite line in this movie is repeated at least 3 times, and I can't say it on this blog. It's a simile, explaining just how haunted the house is.
Best Moment: It's so hard to pick just one. I might have to go with the time when a guy was stabbed through the chest by a chair. Not only was it amazing to be stabbed by a chair, but you could see the plate under his shirt that held the chair in place, which just elevated the entertainment one notch higher.
Worst Moment: I hate to say anything like this is the worst, but the finale of the movie is wrapped up by somebody walking backwards and falling down stairs and dying. On accident, when she's the only one left in the house. Quite a dramatic finale for somebody to just trip and die.
A Suspension Bridge Too Far: There are too many to count, so let me just generalize: this movie, like a lot of horror movies, has this idea that human beings are incredibly fragile (except sometimes horror movies do the exact opposite, and seemingly normal people will just get up and run around after being shot four times). You've got a guy run through with a chair, a guy who stumbles into one of those water hand pumps, and it plunges right through him. Of course, shortly after that he
walks into a thick metal wire (not a thin one, I must emphasize!), and his head pops off instantly. It's the kind of thing that would make you stumble back and cough a couple times, but for this guy it's instant decapitation.
Horror Tropes: There's a real classic at the beginning of this movie:
walking backwards into the street and getting hit by a bus. Not horror-specific, but always grand. Speaking of not horror, this movie also contains a Star Trek Earthquake, where the camera jiggles and everybody has to act like the world is shaking, which is great too.
My Take: This is the lowest-of-budget cheesy crap, but it still has scarier ghosts than
A Haunting At Silver Falls! It's really a bad movie, as you would expect coming from The Asylum, but I had a good time, I can't deny. I also enjoyed Transmorphers, which was about ten times worse. If you want a bad horror movie, this is pretty close to as bad as you can get, in the good sense - you won't be too bored, something stupid is always happening. The one thing they did do sort of right is the completely random monster that appears in the attic at the end. I have no idea what it was or why it was there (the answer may lie in the dialogue, which I half-ignored, but I sure wouldn't count on it), but it was a scary creation.
Missed Opportunity: I don't know, seems like they could've ended this in any way other than somebody falling down stairs and it would've been better...
The Lesson: Be careful on stairs, always use the handrail and watch your step.
