Haunt Season

Stumbling upon the 2024 horror movie "Haunt Season" by random chance, of course I opted to watch the movie as I enjoy all things horror. Sure, I had never heard about this movie, but it being a horror movie was essentially all that was necessary for me to want to give it a fair chance.

Now, the storyline in "Haunt Season" was pretty straightforward, if not rather simplistic. Writer and director Jake Jarvi put together a fair enough script, which is suitable for a single viewing if you enjoy horror slashers. The movie is centered around a haunt attraction, wherein someone is literally killing people.

I was not familiar with a single actress or actor on the cast list, and that is actually something I rather enjoy when I watch a movie. And while I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble, I will still say that the acting performances in the movie were good.

The effects in "Haunt Season" were actually not bad. And there were sufficient enough mayhem and bloodshed to keep a seasoned gorehound veteran such as myself content.

The sets were good, and they definitely put a lot of effort into constructing the sets and working out something atmospheric for the movie.

While "Haunt Season" is not going to be a horror classic, it is a movie that is fun enough to check out and watch if you enjoy horror movies. It is, however, not a movie that warrants more than just a single viewing, as writer and director Jake Jarvi didn't really bring anything innovative or outstanding to the horror genre. But if you enjoy horror movies, I would say definitely check out this 2024 movie.

My rating of writer and director Jake Jarvi's 2024 movie "Haunt Season" lands on a five out of ten stars.

Even though it had a lot of bad reviews, I had to give this movie a chance just for the fact that it is set in a haunted attraction. This blossoming horror sub-genre hasn't produced very many great films yet, and maybe there won't be any more besides Hell House, but I will watch all of them I can find. Any time the action takes place in some kind of theme park or elaborate haunt, I will want to see how it turned out visually. I thought Haunt Season was one of the better efforts that has used this device. The characters were only midly interesting, but it was enough to make me want to see what happened to them. I do think it was pretty funny that one of the fake reviewers actually titled his post "Hard to believe this is an Independant film!" No one will NOT believe that. But I thought there was a level of effort visible that made me believe that this was made by people who really wanted to give us something fun, and I appreciate that.

In the Realm of Terror, a haunted house at a Carnival, the performer Taylor (Ana Dragovich) is murdered by a maniac wearing costumer. She vanishes and her colleagues believe she has flaked out, and the manager Bradford (Stephen Kristof) replaces her by the wannabe actress Matilda (Sarah Elizabeth), who has a powerful scream, to be scalped many times during the show. Soon, other performers are murdered by the maniac, who plans a crime spree on the All Hallows Eve.

"Haunt Season" (2024) is a very bad slasher, with a poor storyline and awful dialogs. The way Stephen Kristof speaks is very difficult to be understood, at least for a viewer not native in English. The gore is intense but with no character development. The best scene is the funny sequence at the bowling, when the manic Danny makes the people cheer for him to kill Matilda. Indeed, it is the best moment of this forgettable movie. My advice is, if you are not cast, crew, member of the family or friend of them, do not waste your time watching this flick. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): Not Available.

So firstly and most importantly some of the reviews for this movie are obviously fake. They have over the top praise and 8-10/10 scores which is ludicrous. Basically they are suggesting this movie is amongst the all time cinema classics ......that or they've literally just burst out of an alien egg and never seen any other movie before! The former is the most viable answer.

Fake scores actually damage the movie they try to promote and other movies. People who might actually watch but see these fake reviews are put off and people then suspect other movies with unbelievably high scores especially indie are also over rated.

As for the actual movie. It's okay. Not really scary and a bit campy. Way too much dialogue and not enough action. But the acting is okay and the cinematography and sound are good. It's more like a mild comedy drama parody of a horror show ... Which would be fine if they weren't trying to pretend it was the next Scream!

+1 For actually making a film +1 For pretty good acting from unknowns +1 For production values.

+1 For doing something a bit different

Score 4

Note to cast and crew etc

Don't overhype your movie! If you don't think you can make a good movie do something else. Don't try to push it with fake reviews.

In theory a haunted attraction is the perfect place for a slasher to ply his trade because no one would notice a real masked psycho stabbing people amid the scary performers and corn-syrup gore. Although the subgenre exploring the premise is relatively recent, it seems like it's already exhausted its possibilities; this effort feels a bit stale. It's not inventive enough to offset the low budget or the predictable plot. The dialogue and characterizations seem reasonably authentic (or at least they're not distractingly inauthentic), but the characters aren't compelling enough to engender much interest. It's a forgettable one-time watch if you can stream it for free, and nothing more.