The Scarehouse

Honestly at a loss to all the 1 star reviews, to say the least. I prefer to start any movie with default/neutral 5 and go from there, and have never dropped below 3 (for House of Fears, an utterly lifeless Halloween flick that somehow rates higher than this...)

I've seen plenty of Halloween-based flicks and this is definitely on the upper range, with most being passable 5s or slightly positive 6. I'd rate this 8 along with Rob Zombies Halloween (Carpenter original getting 10).

It is essentially torture porn as two girls enact a plan of torture kill revenge. Some of the scenes become quite uncomfortable, but I can't see this being any worse than Saw, which has a much higher rating? Granted their justification for such, revealed slowly throughout, is arguably weak compared to what is likely an overkill of revenge. In any event, it's just a movie, they were wronged but by varying degrees amongst their victims, and 2 years in jail didn't seem to help their state of mind.

The film is what it is, and it does what it does with a certain stylish quality. The performances were solid all around, there are some nice Halloween-styled visuals, and the quality of film and music were above average for most Halloween films (granted the more modern ones have all seemingly reached a rather consistent tone here).

If the trailer strikes your fancy, you'll probably enjoy it. Another review very apt in "Mean Girls meets Saw." Reminded me of a behind the scenes/inverted take on Scream or Scream 2 in which we follow instead the killers point of view of events. Strangely enough it also felt at times like an alternative "Ginger Snaps" sequel in which the two sisters have averted lycan encounters and matured their outcast duet into a Halloween murder house (the one looks very much like the dark haired sis, and the other is even Ginger-esque and more often is the one pushing their plans moral boundaries).

What could have been a nasty revenge flick taking place at a scarehouse sadly turns in a flick with nothing really scary to see and when the horror should come in the editing fades to black.

With fading to black it's up to the illusion of the viewer to think how bad the victims are getting their punishment but of course that doesn't work. There are also faults in editing on part of close-ups but hey, let's stick to the flick.

The only good thing is that slowly the flick shows why those two girls are getting revenge against their friends. But overall the flick is lame. each girl who needs to be punished comes alone to the scarehouse and one by one, really?

A perfect example how a low budget can go wrong. But luckily for the production, it's still watchable.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 1,5/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

Sorority girls have set up a scarehouse for Halloween. Non of these girls are compelling. It's hazing style revenge torture. It's not scary nor compelling because nobody cares about any of them. It's low budget. There is one or two moments where it's so bad that it's kinda fun.

It's a good concept for a movie. 2 sorority rushes get sent to prison for 2 years after they are pressured to partake in a sorority prank turned deadly and the girls who put them up to it get off without even a slap on the wrist. These two rushes get out of prison and begin killing the girls who got them sent there. Sounds good to me, but it could have been done better. The Scarehouse isn't a bad movie but it's nothing special. It's definitely worth watching once but I don't think I'm coming back for seconds.

"The Scarehouse" is yet another example as to what is wrong with the Canadian film industry. The biggest reason as to why the movie fails can be seen in its credits. The person who is given credit for the direction (Gavin Michael Booth) not only directed the movie, he is given credit for the script, editing, and as one of the movie's producers. The Canadian government loves to fund movie projects by "auteurs", even though there are very few people in the Canadian film industry (or film industries in other countries, for that matter) that can successfully take on more that one role on the production of a movie. Obviously, there was really no one on board this movie project that could interfere with Booth's vision, and as a result, this movie fails like so many vanity productions. The characters in the movie are all repulsive, the narrative is garbled, and the production values (such as with bargain basement cinematography and lighting) are absolutely rock bottom... among many other problems. While I'm glad that the Canadian government is starting to fund more commercial movies instead of just art house dramas, they still don't seem to understand that the bulk of the movies they are choosing to fund (regardless of genre) simply are doomed to failure because they are badly conceived vanity projects. Unless the Canadian government changes their policy, Canadians will continue to ignore their filmmakers' films.