Harefooted Halloween: HauntedWeen

(My usual format isn’t really going to work for this one so let’s just dive in)

The plot involves a tweenaged boy who works the gate at a haunted house in rural Kentucky.  He’s not allowed to go inside because he’s too young but that doesn’t stop him from sneaking in.  He traps a little girl in a secret room to scare her except he accidentally kills her in the process.  Or maybe it was planned?  Or maybe when she injures herself he takes the opportunity to satisfy his murder curiosity?  I dunno.  It’s confusing, which is a theme.  Anyway, the boy and his mother go into hiding.  Twenty years later he’s now a grown man and returns to lure a frat house full of partiers to the old haunted house attraction so he can kill them.  So sorta similar to Halloween.  A silent, hulking, mask wearing dude with a lethal past returns decades later to his old stomping ground to kill again.  There’s even a dead mother involved.

All the frat characters and their girlfriends should be completely insufferable but because these aren’t professional actors there’s a charm (you’ll see that word again) to their performances.  Most of them deliver their lines in very odd ways that make you wonder how they landed on that particular phrasing.  Some joke around constantly which should be grating yet it doesn’t get to the point where I want to cover my ears.  One thing that’s a pet peeve of mine though is they cast too many people who look similar so it can be hard to determine which characters are in which scene.  Aside from that the constant beer swilling and lewd behavior are the most annoying aspects.  However, the rest of the picture makes up for it.

And what’s gonna make or break the experience for a lot of folks is all the rowdy college shit plus a strained romance between the two leads because that’s the first two thirds of this.  The revived haunted house with a real killer inside doesn’t come on until the third act.  When we get there though it turns into a genuine horror show.  The guests who enter the torture chamber don’t realize they’re witnessing real victims getting slaughtered.  While this is a fine idea I think it was more novel at the time.  Other than Ghoulies II, which immediately springs to mind as a precursor that also did this, I’m struggling to think of more.  I remember Tobe Hooper’s The Funhouse having a different story.  The 2010’s wore the concept out with a whole glut of movies about haunt attractions where the kills are for real.  But in the early 90’s it’s not something that had been done to death.  And they do a good job with it here.  I like how the killer relishes his time in the spotlight by striking a dramatic pose when the audience enters and having fun with the deaths.  For example, he reveals a backdrop with a box score and sports a Mets cap for a kill with a baseball bat.  This added flair goes a long way to making this section entertaining and memorable.

We never find out who this guy really is though or why he suddenly goes on a murder spree.  His mother just died so I guess she was keeping him in check?  You could argue it would’ve been nice to get more info.  You could also argue it doesn’t matter because we’re here for creepy shit and backstory or character depth isn’t a priority.  You decide.

There’s a charm to how amateur and low budget this piece is.  The actors aren’t professionals, the shooting and editing isn’t the best, the story isn’t that coherent, the effects are, well, passable actually.  In the end it all adds up to a product greater than the sum of its parts.  It’s more fascinating than it should be.  I wanted to keep watching to see how the next person would say their lines or what neat gore effect they had up their sleeve or what silly antic the frat bros were up to next, etc.  It kept me engaged.  Perhaps not always for the best reasons but I was present.

I think what carries the film through is its gung ho attitude.  You can tell the filmmakers were excited to be making a movie, down to the teased sequel at the end of the credits (which never happened), and that rubs off.  I’m sure some people will file this under so-bad-it’s-good but for me only the acting qualifies.  Ok, the story is definitely not as clear as I would like.  But the rest isn’t all that poorly executed.

From what I gather this has a small cult following and I get that.  It’s a peculiar little sonuvabitch.  And to pile on more mystique this was the only picture writer/director Doug Robertson ever made.  I hadn’t heard of it until the other day and was glad to be able to squeeze it in for this Halloween season.  You know, I kinda like the title too.  It’s a silly mash up like the movie itself.