Can the House be better than the Ride. I switched to Fangoria somewhat by accident, but this was a movie I was curious about. I'll be honest- it's because of Jeffrey Combs. Can you blame me? Interestingly enough, he's playing the 'scam artist' running a haunted house that goes awry, while he played by a ghost in a haunted house run by a 'scam artist' that went awry in House on Haunted Hill. Okay, maybe I'm the only one that finds that interesting- fair enough. This plot is basic at its core, but throws a couple of weird wrenches into the gears to make it...odd. We have the 'girl trying to confront lost memories' mixed in with the 'fake haunted house that's actually haunted' story. Do they work together? Yes and no. The film is guilty of some pretty blatant cheats to keep suspense going on and also can't quite agree on what they want to happen. I'll refrain from saying more here, but will say that SPOILERS are coming. No complaining now. To find out why this movie is great and terrible, read on...
The film opens with a girl walking into a house and finding a bunch of corpses, most of which are kids. It ends abruptly. Incidentally, this scene is mostly a lie. More on that later...
She goes to acting classes, which are interrupted by Jeffrey Combs, who wants to hire them as hosts for his haunted house show...in the house our heroine wants to go to. What (terrible) luck!
The whole house is rigged up with computers and sensors. They project holograms to represent the monsters and scares. Sadly, they didn't prepare for a ghost to hack into their system and take over. Wait- what?!?
Crazy shit starts to go down and people start to die. At one point, the little ghost kid from The Grudge shows up to...spew poison gas. Given the explanation(s) for what happens, you should bear in mind that this happens away from our heroine.
The good news: you won't die of terminal cancer. The bad news: your head is getting exploded by a holographic knight's mace.
With every other cast member out of the way, our heroine confronts the evil ghost lady- who is now in 'the flesh'. The film cuts away suddenly, just because we have to have the plot twist.
Warning: SPOILERS ahead...
A Detective we've never seen before explains to his boss- who we've also never seen before- that our heroine was just crazy and killed everyone. That's stupid, but at least you picked one...
Wait, so the movie ends with the ghost of the woman coming out to kill the girl who actually showed up in the beginning. What was the point of that previous explanation then? What really happened?!? The *real* End.
You just had to ruin everything, didn't you?!? I'll admit that this movie was not great to begin with. The whole premise- a *fake* haunted house being real- is a bit played out. It's nothing special, but it works for a movie like this. Fangoria is not exactly trying to rewrite the rules of horror film-making, after all. The way the movie turns is also not that realistic. How does the ghost come to life? According to one line of dialogue, she can't be at rest because the one girl survived. I can 'buy' that, I guess. How does the ghost hack into the computer? How does it know how? Do E-Sata cables conduct ghosts? Even if you accept that ridiculous idea, the holograms start killing people...because they're 'solid light.' Is it that easy to turn projections into killing machines? If so, we should probably stop making holograms! So now that we have illogical ghost-hacker-controlled holograms that can kill people, the movie then tells us that none of it happened. If so, how did the murder with the poison gas happen? How did she imagine something when she wasn't even there? That goes for the death of 'Goth Girl' too. They had a simple execution going- what with her being the guide- but ruined it with other kills. Plus, how does she not remember putting glue in the locks? Okay, I can accept this very-flawed plot twist...so why did you undo it about two minutes later? If you can't pick an ending or a basic plot structure, stop wasting my time! You're still awesome though, Jeffrey- good on you. Speaking of good things, here are two of them...
Next up, a three-part look at Jean-Claude Van Damme in movies with 'Death' in the title. First up, JCVD in prison...with black-market organ theft. Stay tuned...
Our heroine is traumatized by this event, even she doesn't exactly remember everything. The solution- go to the house. You, sir, are a terrible Psychiatrist!
Warning: SPOILERS ahead...
Starts out interesting but ends up as a complete disaster. Terrible plot, no tension and way too much ugly CGI.
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