The Houses October Built (2014)

Wow! Such a good movie.

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

well, the premise is interesting – a group of friends travelling Texas and Louisiana in search of a secret haunted house experience that's supposedly more 'extreme'/scarier than any other. unfortunately the execution doesn't do the story justice the camera never stops bouncing and swiveling like the director is jerking off with it through the entire film. seriously, it's bad even for the found footage style. the first 30 minutes are primarily dull, seemingly unscripted banter between dull, undeveloped characters. i guess the lack of scripted dialogue is meant to add to the documentary-style, found footage presentation, but it doesn't really add anything to the story, and you can stretch it out only so far before it begins to look like obvious filler. edit out all the unnecessary parts of this film and shorten the scenes that drag on to the point of killing all tension, and you'd have a marginally interesting 20 - 30 minute short. i can't imagine why anyone thought it needed a sequel, or who would want to sit through it after having watched this, but i for one will be looking elsewhere for entertainment this holiday season

How to best describe this movie? It's basically one of those found footage films which follows a couple of friends seeking thrills and chills, slowly revealing increasing horrors, and... ends badly for everybody.Except without much horror. If you can call a bunch of masked dudes and clowns scary.I mean seriously, the movie is supposed to be about Halloween haunts, but for some reason the filmmakers decided to go for THE MOST cliché things. Yes, haunted houses do usually rely on clichés, but the whole premise is supposed to be about a couple of people who go out of their way into the "backwoods" to find the most out-of-the-way scares. What's more baffling is that half of the film doesn't even show any scare houses. When they are shown, the scenes are so rushed and dark you can barely see anything. Most of the time you are forced to sit through uninspired banter, scenes of sleeping and eating, and at one point, visiting a strip club. Even when things start to go awry (aka being stalked by psychotic clowns), none of these people have the sense to go home. NOT ONE. And then it just ends abruptly with a rather dark ending. The tone of the ending is so off from the rest of the film, it would have been better if they just had fun with it and made it a whole lot campier.To sum it all up - Where most found-footage films rely on the unseen for a sense of foreboding, here we are given an excess of uninspired imagery, boring scares, sub par acting, and no clear direction. Oh, and that doll girl that's featured in all the trailers and posters is actually one of the few creepiest things in the film. So, extra points for her + a disturbing scene involving an organ in a fridge.

Spoiler Alert!This review contains spoilers, but let's be honest if it's 2016 and you haven't seen this stretched out short do not see it now. Go your own way, awful things lurk here.Things like: No character motivation, why do these characters (especially after one if almost raped) continue to pursue this dead end adventure when they are clearly being stalked? Why are they filming it? One says he was a film school drop out, but not everyone who set foot in film school films everything.Why are they being stalked? If so many millions of people go to haunts each year why is this group chosen for the blue skeleton? There is an indication that some of the staff at the first haunt are stalking them because they made an ill advised decision to proclaim their love of Halloween from the roof top of a haunt, but that's not explored any deeper.Was that last haunt actually the blue skeleton or some murder cult that tricked them? This is one of those questions that would have made the movie better.Who wrote the script? Everyone behind a mask sounds like the same guy trying to sound southern, but has never heard a southern accent. Every haunt worker who adds to the plot sounds like this. The ending is so bad that it's not even certain who dies. Being buried alive is everyone's worst nightmare, but its been in so many movies that you need some kind of special twist to make it intriguing anymore. On top of that, the crazy haunt workers who bury them don't act very crazy, they basically bury them in about three feet of dirt them smoke a cigarette and talk about what's for lunch, which probably wasn't even a terrifying meal of people! They probably just went to Denny's and had pancakes like a normal family, which still would have been creepier than the actual ending!They might have cut off one character's tongue, but you never see the tongue or really even know if that's what happened. They might have cut up one fella with a chain saw, but then you see him getting buried alive.I thought that they may have been going for some ambiguity, but they set up very terrifying questions and then instantly answer them, and leave really boring questions unanswered. Did any haunts actually use real corpses? Who knows...On top of the terrible script, lack of character motivation, poor attempt at ambiguity, and ending where they did literally every right thing wrong, the actors (who might have been great with a good script or entirely different movie) were all cookie cutters of each other. Every male except Mike is the exact same character. So much so that by the middle of the movie I couldn't figure out who was who. Mike is only different because he is a little bit dumber, has red hair and a beard. Brandy had a chance of standing out, but turned into a lackluster version of a female co-star.This is the first review I've ever written so go easy on me. If my review is awful consider the source material. If you skipped then entire review to find the point at the end, here is the point.Do not watch this movie. It's awful.

As soon as I realised that this was yet another 'found footage' style horror, my expectations were immediately lowered. However, I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of this particular attempt. The story managed to keep my interest until the very end, the cast done a great job and some of the characters really creeped me out, especially some of the clowns. It also had me guessing right up until the very end whether the characters lives were actually really in danger or whether the whole thing was some kind of elaborate Halloween prank. If you're a big horror fan like myself then I'd definitely recommend seeing this, however once would probably be enough for most people....