Review by Ben Bussey
I’m sure anyone who’s ever stepped foot in a haunted house attraction, or taken a ride on a ghost train, or done one of those zombie run things I hear tell of, will have had that brief moment when a small part of them stops and asks – what if this is for real? You’re in a dark place surrounded by weird and freaky-looking stuff, with screams of terror echoing all around you, figures leaping out of the shadows with chainsaws in hand: who’s to say those might not be real screams of terror you’re hearing, real blood you see sprayed across the walls before you, a real chainsaw blade roaring in your face? Who would ever know for sure under the circumstances? This is the central hook of The Scarehouse – but by no means is it the be-all and end-all of this Canadian indie horror. It’s set on Devil’s Night in an urban Halloween attraction (using a bona fide Windsor, Ontario haunted house attraction as its main location), but director Gavin Michael Booth’s film is out to provide a bit more than your textbook slasher/torture movie scares – and largely succeeds in doing so.
It all seems innocent enough at first, as we open on a pair of young women, Corey (Sarah Booth, also co-writer, producer and wife of the director) and Elaina (Kimberley Sue-Murray), whilst they open up their downtown haunted house attraction to an eager public on the night of October 30th. However, questions arise when we see their control room has two CCTV screens for two separate entrances. One of these covers the front of house where an eager public stands in line waiting for the automated door to let in a few at a time every few minutes, whilst the other – conspicuously marked ‘slut cam’ – covers a different entrance intended only for a select, specific guest list. Not long after opening time, Corey and Elaina’s first special guest appears in camera #2, and it quickly becomes apparent they have a little more in mind than simply getting a few scares out of the young woman in question: they intend to make her suffer a slow and painful death. But our two protagonists aren’t just homicidal maniacs: they’ve been well and truly wronged, and they’re out for revenge against the bitches responsible – all of whom are members of the sorority to which Corey and Elaina were pledges just a couple of years earlier.
The Scarehouse manages a couple of things I hadn’t been sure were possible in recent years. Firstly, it makes something compelling out of what is essentially a standard torture porn set-up; secondly, it’s a female-centred revenge story which doesn’t turn out to be about rape – or at least, not in the way we might anticipate. On the first point, it was an interesting move to use an almost Reservoir Dogs-esque structure, flitting between the ‘present day’ narrative played out more or less in real time and flashbacks (via iPhone videos) to the fateful night on which the great wrongdoing occurred. Plenty of indie horror movies flirt with this kind of non-linear structure only to balls it up royally; happily, the Booths have a good handle on the format, working it to build intrigue and keep the viewer invested in a tale which, handled slightly differently, would have felt extremely old hat. They also have a good handle on gallows humour, some unexpected moments of levity helping the film stand above the dour depths of the torture genre at its worst. Indeed, at heart The Scarehouse feels closer to an old school slasher, particularly with some of the darkly funny methods of murder brought to the table.
As regards that whole female-centric thing: I’m sure we’ve all heard the arguments for greater female representation in horror in recent years, and I’m sure we’ve also noticed how often the films which purport to empower women tend towards misandric revenge fantasies which, whether they mean to or not, invariably cast the female protagonists as victims. It’s refreshing, then, that The Scarehouse is not about women suffering under male subjugation, but rather the subjugation that can occur within female social structures such as a sorority. There are certainly attitudes on display which might easily be classed as misogynistic, but these are espoused by the women themselves; indeed, I’m hard pushed to recall any film in which female characters call each other cunts quite so regularly and with such fervour as they do here. This is not to say the men are presented as in any way superior, for if memory serves we never see a single male in the movie who isn’t drunk, obnoxious and lecherous. But it doesn’t seem to matter a great deal as the males are entirely background figures, even the one who turns out to be at the heart of the tragedy which sets the whole thing in motion. The message is clear: women don’t need the mistreatment of men to fuck them up and turn them evil, as they’re quite capable of turning evil and fucking themselves up on their own. Now is that girl power or what?
None of this is to suggest that The Scarehouse is without its problems, of course. I’m a little surprised that the film’s reported budget is $200,000, as to be frank it doesn’t look that expensive; there’s nothing especially wrong with the camerawork and cinematography, but it does very much have that ultra-low budget DV feel. It’s also a little overwritten and overacted here and there, Corey and Elaina’s sporadic struggles with their conscience sitting ill-at-ease with how gleefully they embrace their revenge at other times, and we get a little more backstory than we really need. We’re also obliged to suspend disbelief on more than a few points; two people getting out of jail at the same time, then somehow taking over a Halloween funhouse and running it entirely on their own, and each of their intended victims showing up precisely on time with no suspicions – and all of this occurring within a year or two of the tragedy. I for one would also have liked to have seen the haunted house setting played with a little more; there are only a couple of brief moments which see the paying customers unwittingly encounter the very real horrors in the house only to assume it’s all part of the show, an angle which I can’t help feeling could have been played to greater effect. But given that the core story and the central performances are as strong as they are, these are all quibbles I can happily overlook. Also, I couldn’t detect any CGI amidst the pretty decent gore FX: instant horror cred bonus points, naturally.
All in all The Scarehouse is a very decent movie that’s well worth giving a look, and I suspect it’s not the last we’ll hear of Gavin Michael Booth and Sarah Booth. Between them and The Demon’s Rook’s James Sizemore and Ashleigh Jo Sizemore, these would seem to be good times for husband and wife teams in low-budget indie horror.
The Scarehouse is out in on VOD and iTunes in Canada (via D Films) and the US (via NBC Universal).