A couple of guys and their skanky girlfriends wander around an empty house for an hour and a half and pretend that this is supposed to be scary. It’s not. Then some bad stuff happens. This isn’t scary either. I’m not being flippant, this is the entire plot of the movie. Please don’t rent it. Please!

This film is somewhat of an oddity. It appears to be a student film that has received a wide video release, despite not being good enough for public access. No kidding, my local Hollywood outlet had about 20 copies of this turd on hand, and I have no flipping idea why.

Let me start off by telling you, I have no intentions of being kind to this movie. I generally try to rate films based on their artistic merits, and not let my personal feelings get in the way, but this film offended the hell out of me. How did it do that?

Let me start off by saying that there are many awful films out there and many different types of awful film, I don’t find awfulness offensive, per se. ‘The Sleeping Car’ is an awful movie. It is awful because the people who made have no talent whatsoever, but they are -as far as I know- not bad people, and I wish them all the best in life. ‘I Was a Teenage Zombie’ is an even worse film. Those who made it lacked even a rudimentary knowledge of what makes a movie work, and the film has no purpose in itself. But despite one rather offensive scene, it is not a truly malignant film. The guys who made it just wanted to make a movie for the hell of it, rather commendable, just a pity that they didn’t know how to make a film, or why.

‘Haunted House’ encapsulates a different level of suck all together. How can you have any love for a filmmaker who announces, on screen (granted, in the guise of a fictional persona), that his work is a derivative pile of nothing that only exists to try and wring a few more pennies out of the ‘Blair Witch Project’ phenomenon? How can you have any respect for a pair of young ladies who flash their breasts for the camera, announcing that, if the film isn’t scary, at least the audience got to see their tits. I apologize for being so blunt, but here it goes. Sometimes a nude scene is warranted (if it advances the plot, if it brings a vulnerability to the character, etc.) but selling images of your skin in order fill up 5 minutes of a crappy shot on video film, and maybe placate a customer who discovers that the movie he just rented is basically 80 minutes of filler, is pretty much a form of prostitution. Ladies, please take a cold hard look at what you did in this film, and for the love of God, reevaluate your lives.

This scene basically typifies the level of cynicism that went into the making of this production. The philosophy behind this enterprise seems to be “Shove a turd sandwich down the throat of the audience, then laugh at them for paying you for the experience.” If this film was just poorly made, it would warrant a zero rating, but the aura of undisguised plagiarism and slimy opportunism drive this production so far below the level of sheer incompetence, that it possesses a level of genuine malevolence. If Ken Lay or Dennis Kozlowski were talentless young filmmakers, their project would probably turn out a lot like this.

Well, now that I’ve vented my moral outrage, let's get on to reviewing the film on its technical merits. How many synonyms for “shit-dreck” does my thesaurus list? No that’s not nearly enough, I going to have to make up new words as I go along, just like Shakespeare!

The camerawork is pustulicious. There are basically two locations in the film, inside the house, and outside the house. They are both shot very, very, flatly. The lighting was awful.

The plot, wait I’m sorry, hold on…

… Ok, I’m back, I was just laughing for 45 minutes because I used the word “plot” in this review. I think I coughed up a little bit of blood near the end. Anyway, the plot is lameass-tastic. Hell, the film only pretends that it even has a f**king plot for the first and last three minutes. The protagonist, wait, no….

…sorry, happened again. The, guy who’s on film the longest, proceeds to tell how he and some friends entered a spooky old house, and how the survivors have either died or gone mad on the (so many years) anniversary ever since. That’s right, this flick, not content with just ripping off ‘BWP’ uses that moldy old “cursed college friends” urban legend you heard in the fifth grade, as a framing device. Hell, that antique dates back to at least WW2, I have a variant of it in an old Bennet Cerf book I own. Yeah, that’s right, I know who Bennet Cerf is, you whiper-snappers. I’m not too old to take a switch to your backsides, you flicker show watchin’ rapscallions. Now stay outta my apple orchard or I’ll tell you long, rambling stories about how everything cost a nickel when I was a youngin’.

Now where was I, oh, yes, I was reviewing the plot a’ this here talkin’ picture when I got sidetracked. Yesrirre’ at my age, your mind starts to wander, an I, ...wait a minute, I’m in my 20’s. (Note to self, stop drinking $2.99 a jug wine before writing reviews, and just stop bringing up Bennet Cerf in general, and stop stalling, as much as you’d love to write about something else, you have to review this infected vomit pile of a movie sooner or later)

Well, when the film is actually pretending to have a plot, said plot is purely scrotagonal (Ok, I stole that one from Morgan Web ), however, most of the film just consists of two couples, one wanders around an empty house, occasionally finding stuff, like a rock (yeah, in the houses, because it’s Blair-Witchy, but if memory serves, even the filmmakers thought this was stupid). The other pair sit in the garden and wait for something scary. And wait, and wait, and chat, and wait, much like the audience at this point. The guy tries to put the moves on his girl, but she’s rather coy, and continually rebuffs him. Odd, considering that she’s one of the same two-bit hos from the opening who considered her nipples to be screen filler for bored video store patrons. *Sigh*, yeah maybe that’s a bit harsh. Oh wait, no it isn’t. Some people die, it doesn’t matter who, and it’s impossible to care. The cursed fellow recalls their sad history, ending his tale by proclaiming that he’s the only one left, and he’s not crazy, before giving a limp little “boo”-type exultation as the screen goes blank.

Let me give you a tip buddy, when you tell a “jump-story”, you gotta sell the final scream. It should be loud and unexpected. I must have told the kids in the neighborhood where I used to live that story about the singing dog and the bloody head roughly 10 bazillion times, and I got them every damn time! And they would keep buging me to tell it again! Hell! Give me an empty house, a digital camera, a singing dog, (I’ll supply the bloody head, I have a machete, and can probably find Conrad John’s home address) and I’ll make a 20 minute short that blows this crap fest right outta the water!

This film is not merely nothing. It possesses a cancer of the soul which earns it a rare negative rating.