House on Eden, 2025.
Written and directed by Kris Collins.
Starring Kris Collins, Celina Myers, Jason-Christopher Mayer, Barb Thomas, Carrie Kidd, and Boy Chandra Kusuma.
SYNOPSIS:
Setting out to film their next paranormal investigation, Kris, Celina, and Jay encounter a malevolent, ancient spirit that resides in an abandoned house deep in the woods.
Setting aside whether one believes in ghosts, why anyone would want to wade into the spiritual poking and prodding that is ghost hunting is not only a good question, but also ripe for skewering. Writer/director/star/social media influencer Kris Collins appears to feel the same way, as House on Eden, a found footage style horror film about a trio of paranormal investigators exploring an abandoned home, seems to be about how quickly a friendship can dissolve once unexplainable phenomena occur and the terror becomes real. The script and performance from Kris Collins also appear to mock the reckless stupidity of why one would excitedly investigate further, as if it’s all a harmless game, when in fact something is not right here and potentially life-threatening.
Unfortunately, that all makes House on Eden sound like a much more self-aware and amusing horror comedy than it is. What’s here is the idea for something that might have worked as a short, but is stretched into what could be generously considered a feature-length film at 78 minutes, with half of that running time struggling to find material. The first 30 minutes or so primarily follow a ghost-hunting social media trio, played by Kris Collins, Celina Myers, and Jason-Christopher Mayer (all of whom play characters with the same first name), goofing off on a drive while searching for their next investigation site. We observe them playing “I spy” games on the road, fumbling around in the woods with camping gear intended for outdoor bathroom privacy, and generally behaving rambunctiously and off-putting, even though there is believable chemistry to the endless banter.
There is already some friction underneath the surface, with Kris perturbed that she never gets to choose a haunted locale to investigate. When it’s her turn to drive the van (which is wheelchair-accessible, perhaps another small detail meant to show how annoying these people are as they make jokes about it), Kris strays off GPS course taking the group to the titular home, a place she found online that absolutely no paranormal investigators have explored yet (a contradiction if there ever was one). Celina and Jay disapprove of this, but back off once they receive secondhand confirmation from peers that no one has investigated this place yet, meaning it could yield some spooky results.
As a film, it would be nice to relay the same messaging. Despite the occasional cleverly crafted jump scare (whether it be characters pranking one another, indecipherable noises, or unknown shadows and figures off in the distance sometimes rendered more eerie through shaky cam footage), House on Eden continues to slog its way through ghost story cliché after cliché. Strangely, it also plays out as if expecting its viewers will have no familiarity with ghost hunting as a hobby or the various gadgets deployed on a hunt. This means that the result is no different from watching one of those already sketchy, lame shows, but now heightened with an abundance of horror tropes.
Small tidbits of lore pertaining to a disappearance come into play. Following that, characters begin to black out and subsequently behave as one would expect in a film like this. It all descends into generic satanic ritualism with nothing to say about influencers or paranormal investigations. If the point is that these three get what they have coming, the results certainly aren’t intense or rewarding. It’s easy to see what House on Eden could have been, and these influencers do seem game to make fun of themselves, but the film never capitalizes on any of that; it’s an excruciating watch.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
