Paranormal initiation

SyFy takes the more serious route by taking on the sub-genre of paranormal activity, offering "American Horror House" - A movie that had an interesting idea going for it, but fell flat with literally all the needed elements to lead itself to success, disappointing on multiple levels.

The story of this film was off-beat. It felt as if it was mixed up, going in many, many directions all over the place, making it difficult to follow at points, and becoming slightly confusing with the films decisions regarding its plot story. For what we got, however; a bunch of college kids are getting ready for a huge party, the sorority sisters, of which are preparing for this party, doing so, they uncover more, and more sinister secrets on this house, and it's past. One minute we get a bunch of dead ghosts pretending to be live with one character, the next we have these girls terrifying another group of girls in order to fulfill tasks. Once again, it's hard to follow as the film poorly carries they're plot out. The acting in this movie, also tended to get annoying as the characters these actors were given were stuck-up jerks that never exactly knew when to shut up - leading to the disliking of these characters; we as the audience honestly could ever care less about these recycled characters, the movie gave absolutely no story to literally any of them, it literally threw a bunch of these characters on a screen, and expected the audience to enjoy it. No. In fact, half the time, us audience will get annoyed by these character, boosting our wantings on them just dying already so we'd finally get them to shut up. The characters, on top of that were literally just your typical, throw- away clichéd characters of which we've seen billions of times before. Not even the ghost / paranormal enemy characters could hold their grip on anything unique, offering clichéd dialog, overall character execution, etc. There is ONE good factor to this film, however. The plot story wasn't bad. The idea of a ghost taking upon the weak, and trapping them seemed like a good, solid, fresh-like idea; but sadly. Con's defeated the pro's in this battle.

To wrap things up, this is a typical SyFy throw-away. There were loads of elements that could've easily been avoided, but instead, were faced head on in this flick. You have loads of clichés, from characters, to execution, to many, to all ideas. The film has a neat little idea, but as said before is completely evaded due to it's many mistakes. The pacing was slow, and boring. The story execution was terrible, and even confusing as it throws everything at the audiences' face. I'd recommend this if your looking for something to watch, and your utterly bored. If not, watch something else, and skip this.

American Horror House (2012) - It's not often you see a horror movie where none of the cast members go home early.

I'm pretty sure everybody was around from start to finish in this one, either as a ghost, or a killer, or a victim. Whatever they got paid, they had to work for it.

This is actually a made-for-TV movie that was shown originally on the SyFy (God, I hate that spelling) Channel. There was more gore than I would have expected, but it's definitely lacking in the T&A department. If you're into the latter, you'll have to settle for four sorority pledges walking up to a fraternity in their underwear.

It stars Alessandra Torrensani as Daria, more or less the most outspoken and fearless in a new group of pledges who are being put through Halloween Hell Night as part of their initiation.

The pledges have to deal with the usual witchy sorority leader, who tries to make their lives as scary and miserable as possible. But that's nothing compared to the supernatural horror all of them will experience.

The house was the site of a bloody double murder years before. A young girl stabbed her parents to death, while singing Itsy Bitsy Spider.

We see it happen at the start of the movie. We also hear the song a few times more, including once on a violin. Bad news for the music student who was playing it.

It's evident from the start that the real demon is the housemother, played quite enthusiastically by Morgan Fairchild. Man, does she have some attitude, to go along with a supernatural power that's pretty much off the charts.

This movie, while far from a classic, gets a high five for action. Crazy stuff is happening virtually from the first minute to the last, and some of it is quite creative.

Students are killed in messy fashion, then disappear, then reappear in not quite the same state they were in to start with. It was kind of confusing, actually, until I got used to the idea that dying in this movie doesn't mean you go away.

The acting, across the board, I thought was pretty decent. Morgan Fairchild was excellent in her evilness.

Alright, well sure, this is was a TV movie, but still... I mean, couldn't they have had done is somewhat better than this? It was like watching a scary TV show for teenagers.

The story is about some girls pledging to become sorority sisters and having to endure the typical pledge Hell night. But the house in which the sorority resides bears a sinister and dark secret, and the lady of the house plans to keep it that way.

Indeed, well for a horror movie, be prepared to look long and far for anything even remotely scary in this movie - unless you are a very young viewer and is scared of your own shadow. There is simply nothing scary to be found here, and the story itself, well it was just so-so.

As for the cast, well people were doing good enough jobs with their given roles, even Morgan Fairchild who, and no offense intended here, isn't really cut out for horror movies. But she did put on a convincing enough act here that managed to pull the attention and thoughts of daytime soap opera away from mind.

The ghosts in the movie were nowhere even close to having anything ghostly or supernatural about them. They were merely regular people that popped up and disappeared again from time to time, oh, and with a bit of smudge on their faces. Yeah, if you are making a ghost movie, at least have the courtesy to actually have something that just resembles ghosts or haunts in the actual movie.

If you are planning for an evening worth of entertainment with some good old scares and spooks, then you had better look elsewhere, because you will not find it in this teenage pseudo-horror movie. The movie is long and tedious to get through, and it is an uphill battle to make it to the end.

I can't really recommend anything in particular about this movie which were to make anyone want to sit down and actually watch it. I watched it solely because it was available and it was within hands reach. My mistake, trust me...

American Horror House (2012)

** (out of 4)

Daria (Alessandra Torresani) is trying to get into a frat house but she soon realizes that the house's owner (Morgan Fairchild) is hiding some dark secrets. Not only are there ghosts haunting the house but there's also a psycho going around killing teens. American HORROR HOUSE might be the first ghost-slasher and for the most part it's mildly entertaining as long as you don't come in expecting some sort of greatness like THE SHINING. I thought the special effects are what really stood out and it's pretty funny to see how much gore and violence can get onto TV these days. It's just funny thinking that the SyFy channel is started to show gorier movies on prime time television than what fans were getting in theaters back in the 80s (when they were also being cut down by the MPAA). There are quite a few memorable death scenes here ranging from one poor slob who gets his tongue ripped out to the highlight scene involving a saw. I'm not going to spoil how the saw effect works but it was quite clever and funny. The performances are about what you'd expect from a movie like this but Torresani was nice in the lead and it was certainly funny seeing Fairchild appear in a film like this. Storywise this thing really isn't too hard to figure out but the material is good enough for a TV movie.

Attempting to pledge a new sorority during a Halloween party, the new pledges find the event used as a recruiting session by the ghostly house-mother suffering under a malicious curse to possess the house and must find a way to stop it from going through.

This one here was actually quite an entertaining and exceptionally fun entry. The main element of the many pluses that comes up here is the fact that this one uses a near-continuous amount of ghost action which keeps this one moving along at such a brisk pace and never really lets it up. The early ghost shots of the girl haunting the cellist in the practice room and appearing to the rejected pledge are pretty chilling scenes and definitely set up some creepy atmosphere when mixed with the actions of the cop investigating the disappearances inside the sorority to the girls going through the initiation ceremonies at the same time. These manifestations of the ghosts are more than enough to provide a dark atmosphere here that's based off the haunting encounters being quite fun while also giving this one some solid supernatural basis. This makes the shots of the ghosts possessing the different artifacts and chasing them for great moments here featuring the attack on the group in the attic where the bear costume continues the attack, the final ghost ambush on the detective and the different visions of the past tragedies from the child's murders to the original deaths of the different figures in the house's history really gather up into formidable and enjoyable scenes. Finally, the main segments where they go around and invade the party, whether through ghostly temptation or simply appearing solely to those aware of their presence but remaining to the other party guests, is incredibly fun and definitely lives up to it's spectacle showpiece by setting the turning and corrupting in motion as well as providing this with the thrilling and action of the chases along the house where it finally gives them the key to overcome them. When mixed together with the rather gory deaths that are thankfully not CGI but actual prosthetics, there's a lot to like here. These here are enough to hold off the few small problems with this, starting with the lame point here involving the cursed-to-remain storyline which certainly doesn't need to be there and is introduced so late as to be an afterthought. There's the usual bad CGI, but overall this one wasn't nearly atrocious and remained quite enjoyable.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Language, Brief Nudity and drug use.