Paranormal initiation

American Horror House (2012)

** (out of 4)

Daria (Alessandra Torresani) is trying to get into a frat house but she soon realizes that the house's owner (Morgan Fairchild) is hiding some dark secrets. Not only are there ghosts haunting the house but there's also a psycho going around killing teens. American HORROR HOUSE might be the first ghost-slasher and for the most part it's mildly entertaining as long as you don't come in expecting some sort of greatness like THE SHINING. I thought the special effects are what really stood out and it's pretty funny to see how much gore and violence can get onto TV these days. It's just funny thinking that the SyFy channel is started to show gorier movies on prime time television than what fans were getting in theaters back in the 80s (when they were also being cut down by the MPAA). There are quite a few memorable death scenes here ranging from one poor slob who gets his tongue ripped out to the highlight scene involving a saw. I'm not going to spoil how the saw effect works but it was quite clever and funny. The performances are about what you'd expect from a movie like this but Torresani was nice in the lead and it was certainly funny seeing Fairchild appear in a film like this. Storywise this thing really isn't too hard to figure out but the material is good enough for a TV movie.

Alright, well sure, this is was a TV movie, but still... I mean, couldn't they have had done is somewhat better than this? It was like watching a scary TV show for teenagers.

The story is about some girls pledging to become sorority sisters and having to endure the typical pledge Hell night. But the house in which the sorority resides bears a sinister and dark secret, and the lady of the house plans to keep it that way.

Indeed, well for a horror movie, be prepared to look long and far for anything even remotely scary in this movie - unless you are a very young viewer and is scared of your own shadow. There is simply nothing scary to be found here, and the story itself, well it was just so-so.

As for the cast, well people were doing good enough jobs with their given roles, even Morgan Fairchild who, and no offense intended here, isn't really cut out for horror movies. But she did put on a convincing enough act here that managed to pull the attention and thoughts of daytime soap opera away from mind.

The ghosts in the movie were nowhere even close to having anything ghostly or supernatural about them. They were merely regular people that popped up and disappeared again from time to time, oh, and with a bit of smudge on their faces. Yeah, if you are making a ghost movie, at least have the courtesy to actually have something that just resembles ghosts or haunts in the actual movie.

If you are planning for an evening worth of entertainment with some good old scares and spooks, then you had better look elsewhere, because you will not find it in this teenage pseudo-horror movie. The movie is long and tedious to get through, and it is an uphill battle to make it to the end.

I can't really recommend anything in particular about this movie which were to make anyone want to sit down and actually watch it. I watched it solely because it was available and it was within hands reach. My mistake, trust me...

Released to TV in 2012 and directed by Darin Scott, "American Horror House" (aka "Sorority Horror House" or "Paranormal Initiation") chronicles events during Halloween at a haunted Southern sorority house. Morgan Fairchild plays the housemother. Alessandra Torresani & Salina Duplessis play initiates for the sorority. Dave Davis is on hand as the male protagonist while Gralen Bryant Banks appears as a private detective.

The low ratings for this movie are hilarious. What were these critics expecting with a Syfy horror flick about a sorority house? For what it is, it delivers the goods. It's got a compelling story, plenty of low-budget gore and a buffet of good-looking women. The pic's generally serious, but with a sense of humor (e.g. the veteran sorority girls). Sure, it's cartoony, but it was made-for-TV, after all, and it scores high marks on the female front.

The film runs 87 minutes and was shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The script was written by Anthony C. Ferrante.

GRADE: B-

Well well well, I really think it's unfair that some reviews are so harsh on this one. It actually managed to impress me just a tad bit, sure, no originality here, a huge load of the usual horror scares, but still, they tried, they showed some good stuff, only if the ending would have been better. Just a little better!

What I really don't get, is why oh why did they decide to show some scary parts during the day? I mean really, do they know the effect of daylight over a spooky scene? Kinda makes it dull, unnatural, childish! After that, the movie continues much better, we get to learn a little about the characters, which in my opinion, acted as they supposed to, some dumb, some cocky and others bossy, afterwards some half gore, half scares, dunno, I say overall, a 5 is a good grade for American Horror House.

Yes! It could have been quite good, even with a much used plot, still, had potential, yes, it achieved some of it and yes, it ended as bad as it could have. But still, I've seen a lot more worse than this one right here, therefore, it's worth a look. No more than one tho, one, for the sake of curiosity. Yeah, that one, that killed the cat!

SyFy takes the more serious route by taking on the sub-genre of paranormal activity, offering "American Horror House" - A movie that had an interesting idea going for it, but fell flat with literally all the needed elements to lead itself to success, disappointing on multiple levels.

The story of this film was off-beat. It felt as if it was mixed up, going in many, many directions all over the place, making it difficult to follow at points, and becoming slightly confusing with the films decisions regarding its plot story. For what we got, however; a bunch of college kids are getting ready for a huge party, the sorority sisters, of which are preparing for this party, doing so, they uncover more, and more sinister secrets on this house, and it's past. One minute we get a bunch of dead ghosts pretending to be live with one character, the next we have these girls terrifying another group of girls in order to fulfill tasks. Once again, it's hard to follow as the film poorly carries they're plot out. The acting in this movie, also tended to get annoying as the characters these actors were given were stuck-up jerks that never exactly knew when to shut up - leading to the disliking of these characters; we as the audience honestly could ever care less about these recycled characters, the movie gave absolutely no story to literally any of them, it literally threw a bunch of these characters on a screen, and expected the audience to enjoy it. No. In fact, half the time, us audience will get annoyed by these character, boosting our wantings on them just dying already so we'd finally get them to shut up. The characters, on top of that were literally just your typical, throw- away clichéd characters of which we've seen billions of times before. Not even the ghost / paranormal enemy characters could hold their grip on anything unique, offering clichéd dialog, overall character execution, etc. There is ONE good factor to this film, however. The plot story wasn't bad. The idea of a ghost taking upon the weak, and trapping them seemed like a good, solid, fresh-like idea; but sadly. Con's defeated the pro's in this battle.

To wrap things up, this is a typical SyFy throw-away. There were loads of elements that could've easily been avoided, but instead, were faced head on in this flick. You have loads of clichés, from characters, to execution, to many, to all ideas. The film has a neat little idea, but as said before is completely evaded due to it's many mistakes. The pacing was slow, and boring. The story execution was terrible, and even confusing as it throws everything at the audiences' face. I'd recommend this if your looking for something to watch, and your utterly bored. If not, watch something else, and skip this.