Review by Quin
Did you know that Hollywood produces 2 billion haunted house movies each year? Okay, that’s a lie. But it seriously feels like it’s around half that sometimes. We all know that there are almost as many horror subgenres as there are species of bugs, however the haunted house subgenre is one that will always pique my curiosity and keep me coming back. Haunt is the latest such film to lure me through its doors and let me witness the particular things that go bump in the night in this old house – the Morello house.
Every haunted house story has a back story. Otherwise our brains wouldn’t know what we (I’m including the characters in this as well) were supposed to be looking for and we would probably shrug and pass it off as just another old creaky house. If that were the case, the movie would be about someone buying a house super cheap and then flipping it for a huge profit. But those are the makings of reality television, not horror. The back story on this particular property is shrouded in, yep you guessed it, death. The previous family had a handful of children who all met their demise in strange and unnatural ways. This left the mother of the family as the lone survivor because her husband died too. So, this older lady with the dead family sells her home to a new family, conveniently leaving a painting behind, so she can pop by and say hello and let everyone know how sad her life is. She also seems to want to make sure that the home’s tragic history is preserved.
If I sound like I’m being sarcastic or flippant, It’s really not intended, totally. This just so happens to be the interesting part of the film. The previous homeowner is played by the brilliant Australian actress Jacki Weaver. Early in her career she played one of the school girls in Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock and more recently last year’s Park Chan-wook film Stoker. She’s one of those character actresses who is great in everything. In Haunt, she drops her Australian accent for a more wounded and fragile sounding American accent. And from her voice over near the beginning, she never once delivers a false note and gives the standout performance in the film. However, the acting from the entire cast is the strong aspect of Haunt. Which reminds me, the mom of the new family is played by former 80’s teen actress/heart throb Ione Skye. That sentence just made me feel really old.
Okay, back to the plot: the new family has three kids – two girls, and a boy who is so painfully shy and emo that it occasionally gets a little silly. He meets a neighbor played by Liana Liberato (a great young actress who was recently in Trust) …when they meet, she’s crying. Which is great for emo boy. He tries to find out what’s wrong, but she’s not going to say. They form a bond which is very similar to Eli and Oskar from Let the Right One In, and when she shows him this wooden box with wires and lightbulbs that can contact the dead, they unleash bad things to roam about the house and cause havoc.
There is pretty much nothing about Haunt that is original. Even the title evokes the 1963 film The Haunting, which is pretty much the grandaddy of all haunted house movies. The scares are routine but not too jumpy. What it does have going for it, apart from the great acting I mentioned before, is the eerie atmosphere. Atmosphere is the one thing that I think The Conjuring got right. The atmosphere here is very similar, but combine that with smarter characters that we care about and you have yourself a pretty good movie that most horror fans will enjoy. Just be prepared for a slow but thoughtful first half with quite a bit of talking. The second half, while still entertaining, is a bit more of a paint by the numbers ghost story that is so heavy on the mystery vibe, I kept waiting to see Shaggy and Scooby Doo.
Haunt is wrapping up it’s pre-theatrical VOD run and will hit theaters for a limited release in the US on March 7. While it’s definitely worth a watch, I would wait until after the theatrical run and rent it from Netflix. I think it’s one of those movies that is best enjoyed without having to fork over too much cash.