House of Bones

Most of this has been done before; this movie is just another sorting of the various elements. Psychic character, house is an entity itself, paranormal investigators, TV show fantasy gets a dose of what it's been mocking, one character turns into a nutty zombie, etc. But still, this SyFy original really isn't bad.

Events are paced well, and things are revealed in a measured logical manner that maintains interest and fuels the action. The film is just graphic enough to be scary, without the over the top gratuitous blood bath gross-out approach. Somebody actually took time to develop a plot, and the acting is surprisingly decent. Characters are intentionally written as obnoxious, so you never really care gets eliminated. This allows the film to focus more on some innovative ways to knock people off. And you'll need a score card to keep track of the body count.

Not groundbreaking; it's fast-food horror, and you'll likely forget about the movie within two hours or so after viewing. But it's still entertaining enough to get a thumbs up.

Anyone who watches original SyFy movies knows what to expect - a low budget look, often a poor script and average to below average acting. No one watches an original SyFy film for greatness - it's just shameless entertainment even if that entertainment comes from how bad the movie is and House of Bones is really no different.

Basically, there is a TV show called Sinister Sites that goes to 'haunted' houses, films footage and airs what they found. Up till the latest house, the crew hadn't really found anything spooky and relied on smoke machines and tactics (always shoot at night) to drum up the scare factor and manipulate their nothing findings into an interesting show for viewers to watch. The ratings for the show were dropping so the show added a pretty female psychic to the team (Charisma Carpenter) and also decided that rather than stand behind a green screen and host the show, the host would actually go to the locations as well.

Of course THIS house is not like the others - it's actually HAUNTED. People have been disappearing from this home for years (slaves, prostitutes, children) with the last person disappearing in 1950 - a little boy. Things immediately seem odd when the refrigerator is stocked full of fresh produce/food despite no one having lived there in decades. Then, as the crew starts setting up cameras and devices throughout the house, one of the members goes MISSING! .. and let the craziness ensue.

I can not stress enough that if you want to watch this movie because you like Charisma Carpenter, just pass. Although she's technically in most of the movie, she doesn't really do anything. She's the psychic and she spends most of the movie randomly walking through the house getting vibes saying nothing other than the occasional 'We need to leave' or 'This house is evil' and is often randomly in the background of scenes where the other actors are actually doing/saying things. She doesn't have much dialogue and doesn't really actually do anything beyond what an extra could handle till maybe the last twenty minutes and even then, it's nothing to write home about. Just a fair warning seeing as how this movie is horrible. No reason to watch for her since it's not worth it - trust me.

In the end, you have a stupid, cheaply made SyFy movie that completely falls apart in the past 3rd of the film. It gets too ridiculous and stupid to be taken even partially serious and by the end you will probably be laughing like me at how DUMB it is. Just pass. 3/10

While not actually scary, House of Bones does succeed in giving the audience the impression the house is haunted. I've seen haunted house films before where it wasn't convincing that people couldn't just leave.

Even compared to other films syfy commissioned, the cast's pretty small and there aren't many throwaway characters introduced for body count purposes. The pacing is pretty good actually as one character is taken by the house early leaving the others first confused and later unwilling to leave (assuming the house would even let them).

Incidentally there's also less use of CGI than most syfy-commissioned films. The only real problem with "House of Bones" is its anti-climatic ending.

A supposed reality show that does turn real as it progresses. Charisma Carpenter gets the lead billing and plays a sensitive. When she pulls the string of hair out of her mouth it gets a bit much. She won't leave the house because she says she is the only one that can help. The rest of the crew are pretty much unbelievers in the super natural based on their past shows. When they encounter an actually super natural occurrence they start to freak out. Corin Nemec is the shows star, is an egotistical pretty boy who thinks he is the cats meow, and shows up late for the filming and actually plays kind of a bit part. Marcus Lee Brown is the technical guy. The crew wants to bail on the project but the producer won't let them if they want to stay employed. The cute young bank agent played by Stephanie Honore unfortunately returns to the house and gets killed by shattered glass. The remaining crew finally believes and start a search for the source. They should have stayed together. Feeding the well so they can escape turns to be a bad idea. The end is a little unexpected as the producer goes to the dark side and kills everyone else. He continues on as an agent of the house.

TV ghost hunters investigate a haunted house, but unlike their previous episodes this one is for real. A former plantation home, the house is alive and has a taste for human blood! Well for a start this thankfully didn't jump on the paranormal activity found footage bandwagon, a very popular - and often annoying - sub genre at the time. Made for TV this movie is at times cheesy and a bit cheap looking, but it does also manage a few decent scares and has some good gore scenes. The acting was OK but the ending wasn't very convincing. Overall this film was an adequate watch, I have sat through many far worse ghost movies than this. Worth 86 minutes if your time.