After a promising start, “Haunt” quickly goes off the rails.
The 2019 horror film presents itself as a typical modern day bloodbath of nonsense, but I actually really enjoyed its first two acts. We are introduced to the lead character, Harper, who is portrayed very well by the young Katie Stevens. Harper has a dark past that we get glimpses of via flashbacks, and is currently in the process of ending things with an abusive boyfriend.
Katie Stevens is known for finishing in eighth place on the ninth season of American Idol – or so I read on wikipedia. Stevens is very good as the troubled Harper. We’ve discussed before actors that can portray emotion without sound, and Stevens has eyes and natural instincts to pull off drama and tension effortlessly.
It’s Halloween (of course) and a group of college friends go searching for an Extreme haunted House to attend. Of course, they find one off the map in the midst of the woods, and of course, it’s not just a standard Halloween evening of fun.
Stevens is joined by an ensemble group of friends, all of which are ho-hum at best, save for Andrew Caldwell as Evan who is very enjoyable in the movie. In actuality, the group of six friends are quite believable in the handful of early scenes in which they are together. They act cocky at the first entrance into the haunted house, and its exactly the way people would be in the situation. The dialogue and banter is snappy and organic, and it comes off about as realistic as you would get from this type of movie.
“Haunt” opens really well. Katie Stevens aside, I was really liking the unique and quite fearful masks of some of the haunts in the house. There are pretty decent visuals, and one scene in particular has great framing and a perfect score to accompany it. Sadly, this is the last good part of the movie. There is little direction to the story from this point on. At the onset it appears as though the haunted house will target specific fears to each of the friends. But that facet goes by the wayside quickly and its just a lot of blood. And in rare modern horror form, there are no jump scares, or frankly, any scares at all.
“Haunt” is only 92 minutes long. Its very good for about the first half before getting so clumsy, so boring, and so dumb, its not worth watching.
