The Haunting of Whaley House

For a presentation from The Asylum, then "The Haunting of Whaley House" was really one amazing movie. I remember seeing some, well lets just call them questionable movies from The Asylum in the past, but they do manage to throw a curveball every now and then and put out something with real entertainment value.

And "The Haunting of Whaley House" was just one such incident.

The movie was actually rather entertaining, and it did have the occasional scary moment here and there, but in overall it wasn't a scary movie as per se. To me, it was more in the likes of a supernatural thriller that was heavily driven by the story itself and not the actual scares.

I must admit that I am not familiar with the actual story behind the Whaley house, but having seen this movie it has put a seed in the soil so to speak, having sparked an interest in learning more about the actual Whaley house and its story.

The story in "The Haunting of Whaley House" is about a group of young people who venture into the haunted Whaley house, despite having been thoroughly warned not to. Of course some of the youngsters are skeptical about the possibility of the house actually being haunted and not just being a tourist fraud, while others are believers. The night hours grow long as the strange occurrences inside the house amplifies and becomes more and more threatening. Perhaps there is something to the haunted stories after all?

The effects in the movie were adequate for a movie of this budget. They were used effectively although with moderation. But it did work out well enough and helped added to the suspense of the movie.

As for the acting, well most of the people hired for the various roles were doing good enough jobs, however, I personally didn't care much for the performance that Howard McNair (playing the psychic Keith Drummond) put on, he was too mellowed out and seemed like tripping on shrooms. But of course, that is a matter of personal taste and preference. But aside from that, then I think people did good enough jobs with their roles.

The house itself, although not actually filmed in the actual Whaley house, was actually a nice touch. Lots of nice details and small things that you spot here and there. The feel of the house and the mood there was really great and helped added to the atmosphere of the movie. Had they failed to create something less here, the movie would have been a whole other experience.

"The Haunting of Whaley House" is a good movie that is entertaining and just the right amount of spooky and creepy without venturing into being a downright horrorfest. Well worth a watch if you like movie about hauntings, and if you are tired of the hyped up hand-held camera ghost movies that are supposed to be based on real occurrences.

The premise was sort of intriguing, so that was my main reason for seeing The Haunting of Whaley House. It is a mediocre movie, but The Asylum have done much worse. It does get plaudits for the better than average production values- the photography and scenery are decent and while nothing great the effects could have been much worse- an attempt at a creepy and suspenseful atmosphere that few other Asylum movies have even attempted let alone do it successfully and some decent jolts and scares. However, while the acting has been worse before it is nothing special either, if more bland than terrible. The music is rather repetitive, while the characters are uninteresting stereotypes and the dialogue is trite and has no flow. The story has its moments but does fall into generic predictability and is further advantaged by some pedantic pacing and a contrived ending. The attacks eventually get cheesy and were on the unoriginal side to start with, and the gore is excessive and in the end unnecessary. Despite these many flaws, compared to other movies from The Asylum it is not that terrible. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Nothing to see here. Just another one of those movie in which a group of stupid people visit a haunting house and of course have some bad encounters with ghosts. But this movie is even worse than the average genre attempt and even the lovers of the genre will get very little out of this movie.

I think that the biggest mistake of the movie is that it's mostly trying to be a realistic genre movie, while it clearly didn't had the right budget or people involved to pull that off. The horrible acting causes lots of the moments to work out poorly and far from convincing, while the look and story of the movie also never made this movie feel far from a realistic one you're watching here.

The movie also has some pretty stupid developments in it. The story is taking some wrong turns and actually keeps switch different styles, so you are never sure exactly what you are watching here and how you are supposed to take this movie. It even makes the movie somewhat confusing to follow at times, especially toward the end. It gets confusing because things seem poorly connected and don't get buildup and handled properly.

You just won't care about anything that happens in this movie, or about any of its characters. I seriously don't even remember any of their names, even while I only just finished watching the movie. None of them seemed to have a good and distinctive enough personality and the movie is lacking a good and clearly visible main character in it as well. Why and how was I supposed to root and care for persons in the first place who were stupid enough to mess with ghosts, for no good or apparent reason and in the process made some extremely poor and just plain stupid decisions.

It's also unforgivable that the movie is totally lacking any sense of tension and mystery. It would at least made the movie remotely interesting and also good to watch for those who can enjoy and appreciate a horror flick. No, there is not even any decent gore and the other effects, such as its makeup, are pretty much below average as well. Again, mostly due to its low budget probably.

Due to its more slow and subtle type of approach, I would even call this movie a boring one as well. That's also really because there is never happening anything original or surprising in this movie at all. About halfway through you'll most likely be done with it all and are just waiting for it to end. And yes, you might as well turn the movie off at that point, since it's not like the movie has a clever twist or anything else that makes this movie worthwhile in it, after that point.

A truly bad genre flick!

3/10

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I came across this movie by watching someone review it on Youtube, so I decided to try it out. I do usually enjoy low-budget horror movies, but this was just a bore. The acting is horribly bad and painful to watch. It seems to be a near-knockoff of "The St. Francesville Experiment", which is a much better movie. The special effects are basically a collection of home-made effects you see 1000's of videos of on Youtube by people using Adobe After-Effects. The beginning segment featuring the three friends at the front of the house was painfully drawn out, and obviously extended to add a few minutes to the runtime. The big guy there has been in several low-budget movies, and always seems to be type-cast and always playing the same character. There are several attempts at humor in the movie, which fall flat. I do realize this is low-budget, but in some cases that is a good thing for the charm, but this was just an overall bad movie. If it appears on Netflix, give it a try for the laughs, but I don't recommend buying it.

I enjoyed the introduction to this movie, although it had me thinking it was going to be a horror, comedy at first.

Other reviews have complained about the acting. OK, some of it was bad but I have seen much worse on higher budget films.

While watching I had to remind myself that they only had a budget of a little over $100,000 to make this. I think they did a reasonable job considering this.

The most annoying part of this film was when the characters reacted in ways you surely would not under the circumstances they faced.

The ending made the movie worth the effort to watch in my opinion.

I like B horror movies and found this mildly entertaining. I had two friends watching it who don't like B horrors and they clearly did not enjoy themselves.