A HAUNTED HOUSE (2013)

Genre: Comedy
Director: Michael Tiddes
Cast: Marlon Wayans, Nick Swardson, Cedric the Entertainer, Essence Atkins, David Koechner, Dave Sheridan, Liana Mendoza, Jamie Noel Marlene Forte
RunTime: 1 hr 25 mins
Rating: M18 (Sexual Humour And Scenes)
Released By: Cathay-Keris Films 
Official Website:  https://www.facebook.com/AHauntedHouse

Opening Day: 31 January 2013

Synopsis:  Malcolm and Keisha move into their dream home, but soon learn a demon also resides there. When Kisha becomes possessed, Malcolm - determined to keep his sex life on track - turns to a priest, a psychic, and a team of ghost-busters for help.

Movie Review:

Give a filmmaker the seminal horror movie franchise of our time and what could you possibly get in return? If the filmmaker is Marlon Wayans, the co-producer and co-writer behind such strangely gratifying parody movies like Scary Movie 1 & 2 and Dance Flick, you tend to get no further than A Haunted House. Setting his sights on the found footage sub-genre of horror movies, Wayans hammers tempests of raunchy jokes out of the Paranormal Activity series while also taking potshots at The Last Exorcism. This is supposed to be the definitive spoof for the new generation of movie-goers, so how did it end up being so wrong?

Wayans himself – like he always does in movies that he co-produces and co-writes – plays the lead role of Malcolm, who together with his girlfriend Keisha, moves into a new house in an attempt to bring more intimacy into his relationship. He buys a camcorder with the intention of chronicling every moment that he spends with his girlfriend but instead captures mysterious events. The situation takes a dive into farcical proportions when the couple calls in a pair of wacky home security guys moonlighting as ghostbusters, a gay psychic and a drug-sniffing priest who hides his poison in the Bible to investigate.

Surely there’s no shortage of cracking sex gags, underlined by an overly extensive reel of Malcolm pretending to vigorously hump his girlfriend’s teddy bear and a faintly disturbing scene of Malcolm’s girlfriend enjoying some paranormal sex with the ghost – and yet another shot of Malcolm in a bondage outfit designed to appease the demon possessing his girlfriend. If you find yourself sneaking a laugh while reading the previous lines, then you’re probably A Haunted House’s target audience. In which case you’ll find the movie’s racially-charged schtick where Malcolm mistakes his Filipino maid for a thief and a ghost fairly amusing too.

Less amusing is the fact that Wayans – literally – reaches into the deepest of his bowel to fetch us a scene in which Malcolm unconsciously defecates on his late father-in-law’s ashes after returning home drunk one night. For the purposes of humour, it’s more than being needlessly cheap, but for the unsuspecting audience – I might warn – the experience is mildly distasteful, offensive even. Such humour should be kept under the lid of Jackass, a TV series and (very briefly) movie series which is specifically formatted to run crude stunts under the banner of niche entertainment and not be extended to a general satirical movie.

Add to that the endlessly recycled scene of Malcolm and Keisha being dragged aggressively from their bedroom (which is, of course, a reference to one of Paranormal Activity’s most infamous shots that will be parodied – again! – by Charlie Sheen in the upcoming Scary Movie 5) and there’s a consensus Wayans has simply ran out of ideas after so tirelessly orchestrating comedies for the good part of the past decade. As a whole, the humour is poorly connected and the comedic timing feels foisted on the viewer rather than actually being acutely judged for applause. There’re few laughs in A Haunted House and it’s no surprise why.        

MOVIE RATING:

(Largely a victim of overly insensitive humour and a shortage of ideas, this misguided parody of Paranormal Activity is only amusing in a few parts)

Review by Loh Yong Jian