8213: Gacy House

8213: Gacy House (2010)

1/2 (out of 4)

Another "found footage" film from The Asylum has six paranormal researchers going into the home of John Wayne Gacy and never being seen again. The police find their video footage and us unlucky viewers must sit through it. Some would say that The Asylum should quit making movies all together but I won't go that far as I find some of their "mockbusters" to be entertaining. Their found footage films, on the other hand, are a complete disaster most of the time and these I do wish they'd quit making. 8213: GACY HOUSE isn't quite as awful as THE AMITYVILLE HAUNTING but that's certainly not an endorsement of this film. I think talented people can use this genre to really build up some atmosphere and deliver some scares but whenever you got some ultra cheap production like this that's main goal is to make money, the artistic level usually isn't on display and we end up with a horrid film. This movie really doesn't work on any level as it's quite annoying in regards to the story because we're usually just sitting here watching annoying people having annoying fights that get on our nerves. I must admit that I really didn't care about any of these people and I certainly wasn't worried about their fate. I always say you're in trouble when you're watching a horror movie and hoping our humans get killed sooner rather than later so you can stop the movie. Another problem is the technical stuff and the fact that it's just not very good. The various camera set-ups never really do much and in the end you're left with an ugly film with characters you don't care about. Even worse is that there's no any scares, no atmosphere and really no reason to watch the film. A couple of the performances are fine but this isn't enough to make you waste your time. I'd also add there's a séance in the film where the woman uses her neighbor's teenage son's t-shirt to try and lure Gacy to come out. This here was rather tasteless.

The acting is so so poor, it's totally laughable. I mean laughable. Local am dram is better. Or a child's nativity play.

I fell asleep for 15 minutes and woke up and was still bored.

I can't even give this a proper review as it was so terrible. Laughable, not scary, complete rip off of Paranormal activity, Blair witch etc...

The opening set up is supposed to entice and creep out the viewer, but within ten minutes I was already knowing exactly what would happen and which character had the stereotypical traits.

With one female getting injured, there is a very obvious and poor attempt to get some boobs in. Soft porn for no reason, a close up of a breast. Why? Are you kidding.

Sex, in a house later on? Really? Are you sure when you are supposed to be holding an experiment to find ghosts? Sure, why not, the perfect time to have sex. IN A HOUSE WHERE THE BIGGEST SERIAL KILLER KILLED PEOPLE! HA. That's the other thing, this house was a new house on the grounds where gacy murdered people, so the original house has gone, yet throughout, the main guy kept saying it's in this basement they were found. Err, no, the house has gone.

The said main guy also, as a ghost hunter, kept on getting freaked out and scared and saying what the f was that?! Oh my god! Dude, you are supposed to be leading this event.

Total utter gash

Why, oh, why did I not read any reviews before carelessly putting this into my rental queue?? Please do yourselves a service and don't make the same mistake I did. This isn't even worth a chuckle.

Apparently this is, in fact, "Paranormal Entity 2." I didn't see the first one; to read about it, we're led to believe it's infinitely duller and more derivative of "Paranormal Activity" and others of that ilk than we could've possibly imagined. I believe it. And wouldn't you know it? The opening screen tells us that this is "found footage" on the body of a victim, and "it has been edited into a narrative" to tell us what happened and why there's only a videotape left. Even the font is the same as "PA" and "PA2." The time stamps. Ev-er-y-thing.

The plot is more or less already outlined in the basic summary here. A bunch of "researchers"/ghost hunters decide to spend a night at 8213 Summerdale, which used to be where John Wayne Gacy's house stood. That house was torn down after 26 bodies were found in his basement, but apparently someone built a new house on the lot once Gacy had been executed. Now it's supposedly a hot spot for all sorts of paranormal shenanigans, so naturally a crack team of pseudo-scientists, cameramen and pretty blonde college students feel compelled to go there in hopes of communicating with Gacy's spirit.

There's really not much else I can say, plot-wise. If you've ever seen an episode of "Most Haunted" or "Paranormal State" on TV - or if you've so much as seen a commercial for them - you already know what happens. Things go bump in the night, everyone thinks one member of the team must be making those noises just to freak the others out, then something else happens (lights flicker! doors open and close by themselves! they check the camera footage!) which convinces everyone... Etcetera. For 85 long minutes. There's no gore to speak of; there are no legitimate scares whatsoever. There are night vision cameras in empty rooms. There's a medium-type to bless the house and ask that they be kept safe while they attempt to chat up ol' John. (They even bring in a "pure, white t-shirt" belonging to an adolescent boy to try to tempt Gacy's spirit out of hiding. Yes. Really.) The few "special effects" at the "climax" are beyond lame. There is a lot of hysterical running around because someone saw a shadow, or the fireplace made a banging sound. For eighty. five. minutes.

I am all for a low-budget, clever little popcorn horror film. I'm not a horror snob. I don't need art-house subtitles or buckets of blood or a high-concept twist ending or a "Hostel"-esque torture theme to be scared. What I DO need is a character who's even remotely interesting, or something that doesn't look like it would've failed as a high school drama project. This couldn't pass the muster. ANY muster.

I bet you can guess the ending. You've seen it dozens of times before, but done far better. Really and truly one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Take my word for it: if you spend one minute guessing how it all turns out, and the other 84 minutes doing anything BUT watching this...thing...you'll be a much less resentful person for it. Can you tell I'm bitter? I have nobody to blame but myself! But if I save JUST ONE of you from wasting those precious minutes... Nah, I'll still be ticked off.

Is the "haunted house/Paranormal Activity/Blair Witch" thing a bit over done these days? Yeah. But me being interested in serial killers, this one kinda had me throughout.

First off, you got a guy that looks like McLovin in this, two fairly attractive blondes (one for the fans of busty girls and one for the more modest type) and the main actor looks like that guy from Kangaroo Jack. I loved the comparisons for everyone. It does do the kinda lame thing where nothing happens for a while and then the predicable shock happens, but what horror/thriller movie doesn't? On that note, I think this is more of a thriller than a true horror. If you have a scary ghost movie, of course there's going to be the creepy basement scenes-plenty to offer, and scenes where you say to the character "Dude...you really just went there alone? *Sigh* See you in the sequel." lol Okay, so the actors aren't the best, the camera work is a bit shoddy, but it's a fun movie to watch with a group of friends and a few beverages. Just have an open mind, expect nothing, lights off, and hit play.

...Because everything else is a waste of time. Apparently this is a sequel to Paranormal Entity, which I also disliked, but you'd not really think so as it has little in common with that. Everything just looked very slipshod visually, the camera work lacked focus, the effects while not the worst for the Asylum are still poor and somewhat half-baked and sometimes the lighting is so dimly lit. The dialogue is trite and repetitive, adding little if anything to the atmosphere, while I didn't care at all for the characters, they were annoying and you don't learn enough about them. The story did not engage in any way, the first half of Gacy House is so low-key and dull that you don't feel any tension or horror and you even question whether there is a story. The acting is stiff and phoned in in most cases. In fact, the one bright spot of Gacy House is the last fifteen minutes, while highly implausible it does have one or two good scares. All in all, a terrible movie on all levels apart from the end. 2/10 Bethany Cox