HAUNT (2019)
a review by Evan Landon
In a lot of ways, haunted house movies that are actually haunted are a bit of a tired trope, but this definitely is NOT that kind of movie. You can never tell what kind of horror movie you are going to get when it has an obscure title like Haunt (unless you watched the trailers, which I did not) because that could mean anything: a ghost, a person who thinks they are a ghost, a group who is haunted, etc. This one falls under the category of a “haunted house”, to which I suppose it is.
I'll give you the *spoiler free version because this movie is so much better if you watch it with no knowledge of what it is actually about: a group of college kids go to a Halloween party, then when it is over, they decide to hit up the only haunted house with a one star rating. Turns out that was a bad idea because this house is haunted… with demonic killers!
After the first 20 minutes, the cat is out of the bag that this is NOT your usual “haunted house”, however it is an “extreme haunted house”, to which it is referred to multiple times throughout. It turns out it really is not that either as the film progresses because it turns into a macabre game of “cat and mouse” with physical grotesqueries and some awesomely gruesome kills.
At first, I thought this would turn out to be some found footage bullshit knock-off of Hell House LLC, so my expectations were very low, but this one turned out to be a Saw or Hostel-type movie that makes a lot of since because it is produced by none other than Eli Roth. Newcomers Scott Beck and Bryan Wood take the directors seat for their second time as writer/directors after 2015's Nightlight which actually was a found footage film. The tandem did write 2018's A Quiet Place in between which was helmed by John Krasinski to critical and audience acclaim. They did not follow up very strong with 2023's 65 starring Adam Driver which I kind of assumed was the film version of the game Nintendo 64 game, “Turok”, but that has never been confirmed. They did write the screenplay for 2023's The Boogeyman based off a Stephen King story which I have not seen yet, so stay tuned for my thoughts on that. They will be back to write and direct another feature later this year called “Heretic” that does not have a release date yet.
Like I said, this one ticked all of my boxes for everything except a few things: the story is pretty weak because you can pretty much figure out what is going to happen from the first scene and the characters are not fleshed out very well. Katie Stephens does an alright job as the protagonist, “Harper”, and the other actors do just fine for what they have to work with, but again, it would have benefitted the movie much more if we were more invested in the characters overall. There was a character named “Evan” (which always throws me off a bit) who is dressed up as the front of a human centipede for Halloween that made me chuckle. Despite the glaring plot holes, such as how they find the haunted house in the first place, or why the killers are doing what they are doing to random people, it is worth the watch for the killer setting and cinematography, not to mention the gory deaths.
With a budget of $5 million and only turning in a worldwide gross of $2.4 million upon limited release, Haunt did not light up the box office, thus making it a box office bomb. You get that with limited releases though. Despite that, this Iowa born-and-raised duo are in talks for a sequel, so that is definitely something to look forward to. Hopefully, it gets a much better turnout than its predecessor in the multiplex or streaming. Definitely worth checking out.
3 out of 5