Dark House

Actors work at a fake haunted house only to find out it's real.

DARK HOUSE aims for the always popular haunted house movie but falls way short. For starters, it takes 30 minutes to get to the house & no scares once there.

Coombs is good but the back story is lame & grinds the movie to a halt every time it's explained, which is often. The other actors are all serviceable but no one stands out. And, I'll add, a twist so cornball it needs to be explained.

It does not fall under the so bad it's good category, as it's not bad, just boring.

For Coombs fans only.

The infamous Darroh (or something similar that almost sounds like dark) House in which seven foster children where brutally murdered 14 years ago, is being reopened as a horror attraction called Dark House. The owner of this horror bonanza (Waltson) hires six actors from an advanced acting class to scare the audiences. One of them, Claire (played by Megan Ory), witnessed the brutal suicide of the children's tormentor and views this new position as a way to bury the demons of the past.

To assist are brave actors, the house works by an advanced hologram system designed to react to fear and excitement. The system gets possessed by the evil ghost of the foster mother and madness ensues. Soon our main protagonist and her friends realize they are locked in with no escape. To makes matters worse these holograms have the power to do real harm. Will they make it out alive?

Overall I believe this movie grades into solid C (C+ maybe). The hologram idea is a little far-fetched, but it creates an interesting movie, not a terrible scary one. The acting is on cue with this type of movie (Including Jeffery Combs from the infamous Re-Animator) and the ending is a surprise, a rarity these days. If your in for something a little more cheesy then Waxwork, give it a gander.

A troupe of actors hired for a haunted house attraction soon find that they are working in a true house of horror.

Can Jeffrey Combs carry a film? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But it is nice to see that he actually appears as a main character here and not simply for five minutes so they can slap his name on the cover to draw in horror fans. While this may not be one of his best roles, he at least spends a fair amount of time on screen.

Unfortunately, there is nothing new about people going into a haunted house and soon finding out it is really a house full of horrors. I have seen one film already this month based on such a premise -- 2007's "House of Fears". While this may be the slightly better film -- and I stress "may" be -- it scores zero points for originality.

This movie took a good first 5 minutes then lost me completely until the last 5 minutes, so 70 of the 80 some minutes of this movie were a total waste of my time.... If I were a teen who still went for the over the top kiddy scare stuff, then I may have liked it all the way through. Oddly this movie felt like 2 different movies made into one, the first few moments and the last were one movie, the middle a totally different movie all together, if they would have taken out the middle and done something totally different than they did, I may have liked this movie a lot.

For adults who like real horror movies, not special effect no mind entertainment... I give this a 1 in 5 stars. For a teen who still scares easily and isn't much into it making sense, I give this a 3 in 5 stars.

It was a nice idea, and the little twist at the end was a nice touch. However, I could not get past how morosely less than even one-dimensional the characters were, and how laughably rote, non-creative and cliché-ridden the dialogue was during this movie.

The bare outline of the story is intriguing, but the script really was terrible. The acting was either waaaaaaay overdone or shifted from being overdone to underdone and back again. Now, I can forgive such things if the proper atmosphere, suspense and effects are plausibly included. This was not the case with 'Dark House'. I am of the old school, and would rather see authentic make-up and gore effects. I cannot stand CGI effects that look worse than a Playstation 1 game. To this film's credit, it does mix both; however, the absurd CGI effects detracted from this film big-time in my mind.

Skip this one, it isn't so bad it's funny, the death and gore is very average, the 'brief nudity' (if that's your bag) is CGI, and the 'Dark House' looks just like a normal suburban house. It's not what it claims to be or what you think it might be. It's nothing special.