The Houses of Halloween, 2014
Directed by Bobby Roe.
Starring Brandy Schaefer, Mikey Roe, Zack Andrews, Jeff Larson and Bobby Roe.
SYNOPSIS:
Five filmmakers set off on a road trip to track down alternative underground Halloween festivities and the ultimate scare-filled experience. Just when their search seems to reach a dead-end, strange and disturbing things start happening, meaning the experience has found them…
The press notes to this mildly diverting celebration of Halloween claim to reinvent the found footage horror movie and blur the lines between horror and reality. An admirable ambition; what with below-par found footage movies creating a whole sub-genre of horror flicks. Unfortunately, The Houses of Halloween takes an interesting concept – the sheer cultish excesses of Halloween in America and levels it out into a formulaic and rather lacking plot structure.
Familiar horror tropes and stock jolts and jumps are carried off in a curiously plodding manner until they become as expected as everything else. Indeed, most of the time there is a feeling that the whole genuinely interesting stories of Halloween devotees would have been illustrated better in a traditional documentary format. The obsession and psychological need for event organisers and performers to take part in the more extreme activities associated with Oct 31st are far more compelling than this story of wayward thrill-seekers.
Originally titled The Houses October Built – renamed for locations beyond the US for specificity reasons perhaps – the film is at its best when it more closely resembles the documentary that is pretending to be. The first hour or so checking the weird and wild shows that no doubt go on in towns and cities across the States is believable and entertaining. But it’s when the film attempts to become a scare story in its own right that things stumble somewhat. The creatures stalking the cast don’t create much of a sense of fear, and instead we’re left wondering if a bunch of out of work actors are really that bothered about terrorising student filmmakers.
The first half of the film is interesting though, mainly for shedding some dark light on the whole Halloween phenomenon.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert W Monk is a freelance journalist and film writer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng&v=qvTY7eXXIMg
Originally published October 5, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
