House of Purgatory

Well, I had initially expected more from this movie. Granted, I hadn't even heard a single word about it prior to finding it by sheer random luck. I picked it up, saw it was a horror movie and decided to give it a chance.

Turned out that the movie wasn't halfway as interesting as the synopsis made it out to be.

The storyline in the movie was straight forward and very easy to follow, but at the same time it was also so simplistic that it felt like director and writer Tyler Christensen was treating the audience as if we had no brain functions. The movie was just horrible staged and felt like it was staggering around on uncertain ground.

The acting in the movie was good, despite the fact that the actors and actresses had so very little to work with in terms of script, plotline and proper characters. However, I can't claim to be able to single any one out as being particularly extraordinary. You get what you would expect here, I suppose.

As for a horror movie, then "House of Purgatory" was frightfully devoid of anything scary or even remotely disturbing. And the movie just trotted onwards at an adequate pace, but not really taking the audience along on any particular thrilling or memorable ride.

I managed to sit through the movie in its entire running length. Was I entertained, well mildly so. Was it a good movie? No, not even by a long shot. Is it a movie that I will watch again? Nope. "House of Purgatory" came and went without leaving as much as a dent in the chassis of the horror genre.

If you enjoy a proper horror movie, then there are far, far better choices readily available within hands reach.

Nothing horror in the movie. Some events including the ending are not explained well. Must avoid if you don't want to waste your time.

The two stars are for the opening which was amusing. The rest? ZZzzzzzzz. Oh and these are the oldest looking teenagers i've ever seen.

This film starts off as promising. There is some good dialogue and the characters are generally interesting and believable. Then somehow several of the characters are just dropped as our four mains (not necessarily the most interesting of the characters introduced either) decide to ditch their party and go find a haunted house.

Once this happens things slowly start to go downhill, not only does the ditching of these other characters make their scenes at the beginning completely pointless (why not just start at the haunted house?), but it means that things that looked like they were going to come into play later actually don't. So we get stuck with the four leads as they go through this house, and even that can't hold together long.

There is just no pacing in this movie, it builds you up and then lets you down. I did quite like their approach on what is really scary in life, but most of the time it doesn't seem like the characters should really be going through what they are, which again could make sense, but the ending undoes that too. So overall this film feels like it is chasing its own tail, almost as if it had two completely different writers that had completely opposing ideas about what film they wanted to make. There is some good here, but it is buried underneath a pile of confusion and mistaken misdirection.

By IMDB it says this movie was made with 200 000$, wich is really low budget for a movie. This is probably why they couldn't do much in term of special effects or visuals, and i think it hurt the movie. Its better than going for bad effect tough, ill give them that.

Where the movie could had shine is in the story, it start nicely, but then it drag for a while and you have a feeling of nothing happening and eventually the ending seem rushed. Very weird pace. The idea behind the movie is nice, but its execution, partly due to the writing, partly due to the budget im guessing, make it turn out to be just ...kinda boring.

But to be fair i seen worst in term of low budget horror and i watched this on Tubi. so it didn't cost me a dime. Therefore i can't complain too much. If you want an Halloween movie, this really is not it as the Halloween theme is quickly dropped after the intro. If you are a horror movie junky you may get something out of it, but i can't say i would recommand this movie.

Just another low budget horror movie among gazillions...