8213: Gacy House

Please please for god sakes do not listen to ANYONE who said this movie was even descent! Whoever says that this piece of $!@# was anything but a terrible mistake needs to get slapped! The acting was something straight out of a low budget porno flick. Kids in a middle school play could do better than these people. The parts that are suppose to be "scary" we're predictable and dull. Not once did I jump thru out this whole film. There could have been so much potential For such a storyline as the gacy case, but this stupid film made it seem like a complete joke. Thank god I saw this movie for free, or I would have shot myself in the foot for spending even one dollar on it. If I was talking to someone that was looking for a good scary movie at the rental store, I would tell you to put this movie down...step away slowly....and forget you ever saw it existed!!! Consider yourselves warned of this stupidity!

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.

This movie put out by Asylum...

I cannot find the review right now, but one other reviewer said their were some problems with all Asylum movies, that they repeat the same lines over and over, because they have nothing to say. This observation nails it. Listen for people saying the same things over and over, and I mean within seconds, not just as the movie progresses.

Then there is this technique of "people chatter about nonsense until the lead character takes over the scene". This too was overused.

None of the characters say anything personal, except during their 10 seconds introduction on the film.

They also copy about 12 different stunts from Paranormal Activity - I don't mind a few, but seriously... I could come up with something different for the entity to do if I spent about 15 minutes thinking about it... but I won't, I was supposed to be entertained, not be the entertainer.

Even for a micro-budget, they could have done better.

The only thing I liked was the genre they are pursuing.

All blockbusters have rip-offs. Paranormal Activity was an unexpected success and naturally people tried to clock in on that. The best rip-offs were the Paranormal Entity flicks.

But they just aren't that scary or creepy as the originals. The second entry here is also called "8213 Gacy House". And that is in fact what it is all about, go searching the ghost of serial killer John Wayne Gacy. I wont go into the story of Gacy because this is fantasy and not based on the real life of Gacy but one things is a fact. When they here the ghost saying Kiss My Ass it was in fact his last words before his execution.

Where PA moves slowly into a ghost story the PE flicks do take a while before things go wrong. Here too you have to stand a lot of talking and noises before the crew searching for the ghost comes in front of the ghost. I can even say that it is creepy in the last 15 minutes when the séance go wrong. The other difference with the PA flicks is the fact that in PE you always have a bit of nudity.

The fact that you are involved slowly into the paranormal activity flicks do work and do gives goosebumps here and there but this stupid story just doesn't work. It's nice to see an extreme close-up of a boob but that has in fact nothing to do with entities.

It is watchable even as none character is believable, for horror geeks I wont recommend it but for those who are afraid of Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity, stay away from it.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

...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