Stay Out of the Basement

Working as a babysitter, a young woman at a remote house in the countryside tries to help the charge in her care get through the night after complaining of a figure haunting the house which soon sets them out on a mission to figure out what's going on to stop the hauntings.

This was a fairly enjoyable kid-friendly genre effort. One of the better features here is the solid setup that doesn't do anything clever or original but still manages to be worthwhile enough for this type of feature. The beginning shows off how responsible she is and how she treats the opportunity to babysit the young charge with her handling of the questions and how the various events that happen around the house not only start the feeling of it being haunted but the maturity to be that quick to show how she works in this kind of situation is a great touch. The actual babysitting later on and how she and her friend visiting continue this nicely as this all goes through the kind of necessary showcases that proper mindset and nurturing setup that goes a long way to highlight her attitude while also getting small touches for the haunted background. That goes quite nicely with the later scenes to bring about some decent enough setups to generate light but still chilling supernatural air. The first encounter in the woods starts this on a nice note, while the brief bits while they're goofing around in the house of the backstory flashback to explain the potential haunting are both fine sequences that start hinting heavily at the idea of something happening around the family. It goes on in this fashion to the final half where it starts to bring about the true nature of the haunting and how this is played up with the dream about the future chasing her through the house and later attacking the captive that is later revealed to have potentially happened which serves the final twist rather nicely that is surprising with how the particular figure is involved and gives this one some nice positives. There are some issues with this one that bring it down. The most obvious issue here is the preference for spelling everything out with dialog rather than action so the pace can feel sluggish and dull. While there are points here where it starts to something interesting with the daughter bringing up weird incidents or the mother's weird behavior hinting that something is wrong, the lack of following through with a physical presence to pay these off ends up making the film overly talky and lacking with that genre fare. This is a result of the kid-friendly atmosphere that means there's never going to be a chance to play up the kind of content to put that into effect which is the case here since nothing really happens until the end and even then it's not as prominent as expected. It's not as bad as the film's dull pace but it still holds it back somewhat.

Rated Unrated/PG: Violence and children-in-jeopardy.

Let's see , let's put two tons of make-up on a seven year old , since she's going to be the next child star ?

Noooot !!

Nice Home Depot shop lights , lighting woods , gzzzz at least put sum gels on them ? There cheap ?

The basement looked like a storage room at goodwill ?

I couldn't get scared because I was looking at all the crap down there .

Maybe that white dressed ghost was an employee of goodwill ?

Going down the stairs to bring up items for sales floor ?

Liked ghost lady pulling a rusted radio flyer though . Although why does a ghost need a wagon full of crap ?

My new rule is don't watch any horror flick after 1999 .

Thx folks !

Stevydvd ( I will return )

This is a homemade horror, in every sense of the term.

Based on the production quality alone, you can tell it was shot on practically no budget whatsoever.

But for what it is...it's really not that bad.

The story centers around a young girl, who takes on a babysitting job for a woman to whom darkness is attracted.

Through her daughter, the girl learns that they had moved away, only to return three weeks later.

After finding her mother wandering aimlessly through the woods, among some sort of ritual altar.

Turns out, she was lured by a ghost...who has since become attached to the woman- who now haunts her house.

Particularly, the basement.

Hence the title.

The ghost is, well...not good.

It's just a woman with a blonde wig and black mask.

And of course a few props, which look like they were purchased from Spirit Of Halloween.

Like I said...it's real low budget.

The filmmakers do have some promise though.

Because they do a decent job in regards to character development.

So, considering what they were clearly working with...they didn't do too bad of a job.

Of course, it's by no means a great- or particularly even good- film.

But the young lady does a decent job in her role as the babysitter.

While it's short runtime (approx. 70 mins) prevents it from being too much of a chore to sit through.

It feels like it was made by kids.

Like a school project.

Or as part of a college program or something.

Which- if such is the case- would explain a lot, and be laudable.

Just don't go into it expecting much.

But it's worth a watch if you like to see what people can do with nothing to work with.

2 out of 10.

This is clearly a no budget film, but it is a lot better than many movies of this type. It has a spooky story and told it well. A few of the other reviews talk about bad acting, but I found the actresses (as they were almost without exception all female) to be very natural and believable. Emma Pearson was very good as a young child, and Ariella Mossey was great as her babysitter, who is thrown into a number of weird and troubling situations. Rivers Duggan seems off as Liz, but that's appropriate because the character is supposed to be disturbed by everything that has happened and unable to fully deal with life. Everyone else does quite well also. The biggest disappointment is that the entire film turns out, by design, to just be a bridge between the films that came before and the one that comes after. I've not seen any of the other films, so I don't have a larger perspective and am just judging by its own merits. The ultimate villain of the movie is slightly unusual, or maybe is just not explained as well as needed without the other three films to add extra information. At one point it gets a little preachy with a religious statement, but that actually seems appropriate to the characters involved and is not too heavy-handed. That does open the door slightly to criticism that the plot was culturally insulting, but, again, without seeing the other three movies in the series I can't tell is there's a real problem. Based upon the surprising acting chops of the youngest stars and a plot that is both sort of familiar but not overdone, this film overall earns a good but not great rating.

So yeah pretty bad acting, but still a bit tense. At first I was curious about what was going on in the basement, but then it became more boring later on. You can see the low budget spent on the film, but films are not always about the very big stars or a film that cost several millions. Many have good ideas out there. I think the ending was way too flat and that ruined a lot of it. They could come up with something better, and a better explanation, but it was entertaining enough. But you have no doubt at all that it is not a professional film, but that also makes it a little creepier, I think. It could be a situation you could be in yourself.