A group of young adults set up a haunted house attraction in an old hotel, only to discover that it may be haunted for real.
I suppose the premise has potential, but this is one of those movies where you're stuck with a bunch of annoying people who do stupid things. I think the guy with the camera pretty much has to be depicted as a socially awkward jerk to justify why he carries around a camera and secretly films his friends as they bicker or make out.
The other major problem you're saddled with in a haunted house movie is why they stay. Usually, there's a scene where someone says, "Money is too tight for us to leave." Most of us have been in a situation like that, right? Well, this movie has a scene like that, but it's just glossed over without any explanation at all. Sure, you could use your imagination to fill in something, like "the boss's girlfriend is pregnant", but it's frustrating that they can't come up with a workable idea themselves.
Once the movie finally moves beyond documenting the arguments between a group of millennials, it's becomes reasonably creepy. Most admirably, there's no music added. It's just them, the wind, and a creaky old house. One of the problems, though, is that they try to lay on the atmosphere a bit too hard by having the characters constantly breathing heavily and freaking out. The funny thing is that they're generally freaking out over mannequins that they themselves made.
In their defense, the mannequins are doing impossible things, like watching them and appearing in different rooms. That's creepy, but I have a question. Why would ghosts move the mannequins around? Is this the ghost of a practical joker? The only reason I can think of is that the house feeds off their fear. That would actually be a pretty cool plot twist in a movie about a haunted house attraction. They don't go anywhere with that idea or anything else. Nope, the ghosts are just practical jokers.
The problem is you'll now have to watch another hour of ghosts doing practical jokes on a group of millennials. I sat through it, so you probably can, too, but I found it less compelling than other viewers. I don't know. Maybe if you're younger and less tired of seeing the same tired tropes reused without any innovation, you'll forgive all the silliness. When you open your movie saying that the events depicted are real, though, it raises the bar for suspension of disbelief. I wish they'd tried a bit harder to make it seem believable.
I suppose the premise has potential, but this is one of those movies where you're stuck with a bunch of annoying people who do stupid things. I think the guy with the camera pretty much has to be depicted as a socially awkward jerk to justify why he carries around a camera and secretly films his friends as they bicker or make out.
The other major problem you're saddled with in a haunted house movie is why they stay. Usually, there's a scene where someone says, "Money is too tight for us to leave." Most of us have been in a situation like that, right? Well, this movie has a scene like that, but it's just glossed over without any explanation at all. Sure, you could use your imagination to fill in something, like "the boss's girlfriend is pregnant", but it's frustrating that they can't come up with a workable idea themselves.
Once the movie finally moves beyond documenting the arguments between a group of millennials, it's becomes reasonably creepy. Most admirably, there's no music added. It's just them, the wind, and a creaky old house. One of the problems, though, is that they try to lay on the atmosphere a bit too hard by having the characters constantly breathing heavily and freaking out. The funny thing is that they're generally freaking out over mannequins that they themselves made.
In their defense, the mannequins are doing impossible things, like watching them and appearing in different rooms. That's creepy, but I have a question. Why would ghosts move the mannequins around? Is this the ghost of a practical joker? The only reason I can think of is that the house feeds off their fear. That would actually be a pretty cool plot twist in a movie about a haunted house attraction. They don't go anywhere with that idea or anything else. Nope, the ghosts are just practical jokers.
The problem is you'll now have to watch another hour of ghosts doing practical jokes on a group of millennials. I sat through it, so you probably can, too, but I found it less compelling than other viewers. I don't know. Maybe if you're younger and less tired of seeing the same tired tropes reused without any innovation, you'll forgive all the silliness. When you open your movie saying that the events depicted are real, though, it raises the bar for suspension of disbelief. I wish they'd tried a bit harder to make it seem believable.