HAUNT (2013)

Genre: Horror/Thriller
Director: Mac Carter
Cast: Jacki Weaver, Liana Liberato, Danielle Chuchran, Harrison Gilbertson
RunTime: 1 hr 26 mins
Rating: PG13 (Horror)
Released By: InnoForm Media & Cathay-Keris Films
Official Website: http://www.ifccenter.com/films/haunt/

Opening Day: 3 April 2014

Synopsis: A family of five moves into a beautiful, sprawling dream home. One problem: it's cursed, having caused the deaths of the previous family to occupy it, leaving only one survivor (Jacki Weaver). The family's moody 18-year-old son and his mysterious new neighbor inadvertently awaken something in the house while also violently shaking the many skeletons in the many closets. Mac Carter's debut feature is a frightening and powerful character-driven haunted-house film that isn't afraid to take theaction outside.

Movie Review:

There are haunted house movies, and then there are haunted house movies. Some like ‘Insidious’ and ‘Paranormal Activity’ belong to one category, and forever change the way we look at shadows at night or creaking furniture at any time of the day. There are also those like ‘Haunt’, which frankly do just the opposite of what the title of this movie implies it does. Yes, these are the ones that make you wonder just what they had intended to accomplish in the first place; after all, it doesn’t take long before another one of their kind comes along to replace them.

If it isn’t quite apparent enough yet, ‘Haunt’ is an utterly forgettable haunted house horror thriller from director Mac Carter and screenwriter Andrew Barrer. Like countless others of its ilk, this one begins with an unsuspecting family moving into a house with a history. Turns out that its previous inhabitants had all lost their lives, save for a ghoulish-voiced, hollow-eyed matriarch played by Jacki Weaver, who narrates the opening voiceover and turns up here and there to warn its new tenants to stay out of the foreboding attic which her teenage son used to occupy.

Save for a couple of scenes, it seems that the haunting primarily afflicts the middle child of the Asher family, Evan (Harrison Gilbertson), as well as his newfound friend, Sam (Liana Liberato). Evan meets the latter while taking a walk through the wintry woods one night, and his chivalric instincts are immediately awakened by this local girl crying on her own after being abused by her father. Like the rest of Evan’s family members though, her physical abuse is treated almost like an afterthought, so poorly and dimly sketched you wonder why the filmmakers even bothered in the first place.

What should have been an increasingly tense collection of creepy goings-on however fizzles out in the middle, as first-time feature filmmaker Carter sacrifices the horror for some moody adolescent coupling. Evan becomes increasingly obsessed with Sam, and things only step up a notch when the latter convinces the former to use an old radio to communicate with the dead, unleashing the spirit which in the opening scene is seen terrorising a grieving father trying to use the same device to make contact with his deceased children.

Unfortunately, even at this late stage into the film, you’ll hardly find the scares memorable. For one, there are no compelling characteristics to the ghostly apparitions which Evan and Sam run into. For another, there is an overreliance on jump scares to get a jolt from its audience, an oft-used technique which ends up being frustrating more than anything.  And before you know it, the film’s underwhelming climax is over, never quite explaining or building up to any sort of meaningful end the use of the old radio to fully awaken the spirits in the house, nor for that matter giving any clue just why the meanest of them lurking spirits would want to terrorise Evan or Sam in the first place.

It isn’t just the story that is lacking; indeed, for what has been billed a character-driven horror, the characterisation is simply wanting. There is no backstory to either Evan or Sam, nor any chemistry that sparks between them despite the fact that Sam comes over to bunk in Evan’s bed most of the time; short of adolescent lust (confirmed in a brief love-making scene between the pair), there is no other explanation why Evan takes to Sam the way that he does, which calls into serious question just why he would risk joining her in some spirit-raising in the first place.

The fault lies hardly with our two teenage stars; rather, whether in the scripting or the directing, there is little clue whether ‘Haunt’ intends to be a creepy thriller the way ‘Insidious’ or ‘The Conjuring’ was or an adolescent drama built on emotional disaffection. The result is a movie that ends up neither scary nor affecting in any manner. Yes, it barely lives up to its name, and like we said at the start, belongs to that category of haunted house movies which are forgotten as soon as the lights in the cinema come on. 

Movie Rating:

(Unless jump scares are your thing, there is nothing Haunt-ing about this subpar haunted house horror that tries but fails to be a quiet and affecting adolescent drama)

Review by Gabriel Chong