Haunted

Regardless of what I think of writer/director Victor Salva as a person, I must admit that I really like most of his movies! Fact remains that Salva knows what frightens people. He made some unforgivable mistakes in the past, but really all the felonies that brought him in the news are not my business. My only interest goes out to his directing skills and I can safely say he's one of the few directors out there that approach the horror genre with the right attitude. "Clownhouse" is a very good (and underrated) 80s horror classic, "Nature of the Beast" is vintage 90s thriller material and I do most definitely rank "Jeepers Creepers" (parts I and II) among the best and most genuinely unsettling genre outings of the new millennium. Yes, seriously! I've been waiting for the third film in the series to get released for years now, but production apparently still hasn't started yet! Salva's name hence was my sole motivation to seek out "Dark House", which otherwise just looks like a passable and thirteen-in-dozen backwoods horror movie. This isn't Salva's best work by far, but it definitely still contains a handful of good story ideas, creative plot twists, macabre set pieces and grisly make-up effects. 23-year-old Nick Di Santo is blessed – or burdened – with the supernatural gift of being able to see other people's deaths when he touches them. Nick is also searching for the truth regarding his past, particularly who his father is and where do the recurring nightmares originate from. A traumatic visit to his mother in the asylum teaches Nick that he, in fact, owns a mysterious old house that has vanished in a flood. When he and his friends (including his 8-month-pregnant girlfriend) eventually discover the house, its entrance is blocked by a creepy hermit and an army of axe-wielding and dreadlocked monstrosities… Welcome home, Nick! There are quite a few plot aspects that initially seem strange and rather silly, like the recurring strange voice coming from basements through ventilation holes and frequent references towards Biblical myths as well as towards the number 23 (where have I seen that before…) but eventually they all do make sense. If there's one thing you have to hand to Victor Salva, it's his ability to bring new variations to old clichés (depiction on demons, paradoxes, deserted towns…) and his courage to insert shock-twists and unconventional endings. "Dark House" ("Haunted" is such an awfully mundane title…) contains a couple of nasty killings and bloody make-up effects, but overall I hoped it would have been gorier. Tobin Bell, also the co- producer, gives a good menacing performance and it was particularly a relief to see him in a different role than the tiresome and annoyingly arrogant Jigsaw character! "Dark House" is an enjoyable little side project, Mr. Salva, thank you for that, but now please pull yourself together and start filming "Jeepers Creepers 3: Cathedral"!

It starts off pretty well, don't they all though, then it gets a bit rushed and disjointed in the middle to end. They could have run another half hour in the second half to explain what the hell was going on a bit more. Not a bad movie though.

Victor Salva is up to his old tricks in DARK HOUSE, another predictable horror yarn featuring buff young men who invariably disrobe at some point for the role. I'm surprised that Salva still manages to find work in Hollywood, not because of his private indiscretions (to put it mildly), but because his films are just so pitiful. CLOWNHOUSE, the two JEEPERS CREEPERS flicks, they've all been below par and DARK HOUSE is no exception.

The house of the title is an ancestral home sought out by a group of faceless teenage types without an ounce of charisma between them. The house has some magical properties including the ability to move at will, but other than that there's little of interest here, apart from the requisite bloodshed. No scares, no atmosphere, just monotony. Lesley-Anne Down has a minor part and there's a nicely complex turn from SAW's Tobin Bell, but otherwise DARK HOUSE is a mess and nothing you've not seen before.

All us reviewers should state some qualifier up front so folks know whether to keep reading. So I'll say I think Jeepers Creepers is a modern masterpiece so you'll know where I'm coming from. I also really liked JC2 but what the hell happened to Victor Salva after that? Rosewood Lane was poor and Jeepers 3 sucked so badly it almost pulled my own soul out! This film, it turns out, was made between those two turkeys ( I didn't even know it existed) and it's his 2nd best film. But what got me the most is how many callbacks there are to the Creeper-verse. Intentional or is he just repeating himself? It's an interesting film (with a weak beginning) but once it gets going it takes turn after turn into surprising territory - just like Jeepers Creepers. And then there's the sixties vehicle driven by the leads - I'm not a car nut but its almost a clone of the impala from the earlier film and the passenger even does the same hand movement out the window; the coat and general mien of the Tobin Bell character harks to the Creeper, as does the location; there's a pivotal diner scene; creatures are driven over again and again and jump back up; even some shots and staging is almost identical to JC (spin out the vehicle on the old road shots anyone!). And even though it gets somewhat sloppy toward the end (a lotta strands to tie together) when it hits its mark its really very good (creepy, axe dragging figures scuttling about is a particularly original vision) and it hits more than it misses. A few of the FX are pretty bad but it doesn't outweigh the positives and, all in all, I'll happily watch this again next Halloween season.

Ding ding ding ding, JackPot!! WoW, was I impressed or what. I knew Victor Salva was on this one, and his work usually managed to stand tall, but man, if this movie came just a few years sooner it could have been somewhat of a pioneer.

The character complexity is lovely, to actually see people with many faces, not even knowing which one is the real one, the plot, well, it is a movie about a guy that inherits a house and believe it or not, it's actually so much more to it, the tension provided by the sound is quite good, especially considering the fact that they did not use fancy bands or anything, simple and effective, I mean, I actually graded this a 7. Because it works as a horror, it didn't even show nudity, when it could, cause it preferred to rely on something more, and considering this is not a slasher, I have to say, Bravo!!

Look, words will get you psyched on, and I don't wanna send you to somewhere expecting a masterpiece, but in my honest opinion, this is the best "house in the woods" movie I've seen in a long time. Evil Dead the remake was all about gore, Dark House is all about plot. Scares will come, tension will build around you, and question marks will pop all around.

Dark House, thank you for keeping the hope of good horror still alive!