I might be miffed too if Scar-Jo turfed me.
All houses are different things to different people.
To some they are simply a roof and a place to take shelter, to others a source of immense pride and an ever-evolving creation that tells visitors about the owner. To me my house is a reason to get up 5 days a week and go to work so I can pay the sucker off. It is also the reason I swear at weeds every 6 weeks or so.
This one makes men want to kill their entire families.
All houses are different things to different people.
George, Kathy and a trio of kids move into what they think is their new dream home and the start of their new life together, as George and Kathy are soon to be married and the three children are from her former relationship.
The new property is a large charming home on the lakeside, complete with a boatshed and surrounding land. It seems more that just ideal, it is perfect, and at a price that is similarly affordable to the young family.
The sales blurb might well have been ‘Charming well appointed rural home, a bit of a fixer-upper (but nothing a ‘let’s all muck in’ montage can’t sort out), amazing features, spontaneously igniting furnace, hardly ever causes owners to slaughter innocent family…
George and Kathy didn’t bother reading the whole thing. They snapped it up on the spot and went straight to the montage.
Unfortunately it is the usual downhill spiral from here. Almost immediately the new occupants start seeing, hearing and sensing things, voices, glimpses and odd happenings, all with such frequency that it immediately reminded me of the great Eddie Murphy bit in Delirious when he spoke of white families staying way too long when all the evidence suggests a swift exit is more than warranted.
For me this would have been well before the fridge magnets started giving unsubtle portents of doom and the fixtures and fittings started bleeding, but that’s just me. I’m a chicken that way.
George, Kathy and co are made of sterner stuff. The kids start interacting with some of the ‘locals’ that are as yet unknown to the adults, but not the ‘nasty tall man’. George on the other hand changes dramatically in a short span of time, prompting a wide eyed Kathy to perform the inevitable ‘microfiche hunt’ in the local library, a hunt that poured more juice into the cup of ‘let’s not be hanging around any longer’, a cup that was long since overflowing.
Being a remake of a classic the film-makers obviously decided to ramp things up a notch, and the second half of the movie goes all out with gore and shocking moments. Needless to say when the opening moments of the film suggest it is ‘Based on a true story’ I didn’t think that this meant a large underground torture chamber filled with past, present and future victims, and toddlers tightrope-walking the roof of a two storey building…
In fact the final quarter of an hour is an insane series of ooga-booga imagery, noise and events intending to shock. Unfortunately it ends up reeking of desperation and all falls flat, and even though the first hour wasn’t that crash hot to begin with the bloodbath that it becomes has Michael Bay’s name smacked all over it (he didn’t direct but he has imprinted his “MORE!” aesthetic onto this insanity).
Final Rating – 5 / 10. It’s slightly shocking to see a haunted house film with honest to goodness R rated gore and a willingness to scare and unsettle. It’s telling though that this remake is already scheduled for another do-over in the next year or so.
