Director: Dominic O’Neill
Year: 2024
Country: Ireland
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Haunted House
Plot:
Preparing for a special live broadcast, the crew of a paranormal investigation show visits a family claiming they’re being haunted by ghostly spirits and decide to visit the family to determine if they’re true, and the longer they stay there come to believe the house has more going on than they realize.
Review:
This was a generally fun and likable genre effort. Among the better elements here is the strong setup that manages to fit everything into a fun enough time as it spells out its presentation. With the live broadcast presentation of the whole experience showing off not just the initial prep work that goes into the presentation including buffer spots from the network advertising their other shows, the commercial breaks where the cameras keep rolling to show how they quibble with each other over their equipment or upcoming segments in the investigation, and the on-camera moments that show how their discoveries are putting them into something far more dangerous than they expected. This is handled well throughout here and comes along even better when added to the other strong work done with building up the background of the house with the family who live there or the paranormal experts that provide a generally intriguing story to this one.
That gives the sense of supernatural shenanigans going on in the investigation to have a lot more context throughout here. With things starting slowly with scratches and messages written in the walls before turning to physical manifestations in the room surrounding them, this goes quite nicely with the escalating sense of danger established once they bring in the experts who start taking more obvious measures. As this turns to features such as strange noises or figures caught on the cameras, seances gone wrong, and supernatural habitation of their bodies which signal the start of things going wrong in the final half as the lore has been built up nicely enough that the visuals offer a fun enough time here.
There are a few issues with this one. The main problematic factor is the generally confusing nature of how the broadcasting is handled which features plenty of genuinely chilling imagery in a manner that doesn’t make any sense. Following the seance, it seems to indicate the production stops but then the events keep happening while the group shuts down so it’s completely chaotic to the point of being so unsure about what’s going on. The series of issues involving the broadcast going on with future revelations or alternate scenarios that make no sense nor have anything that ties it together to make for a coherent time. The other issue is the lack of genuine action in the first hour as it’s mostly just reacting to stuff that constitutes the scars which is the case for a majority of these types of films and is more of a structure issue than anything else even if it still affects the movie overall.
Overview: ***/5
Generally fun enough for what it is, this is a serviceable enough feature that brings about enough positives to be likable enough although it does get let down by enough issues to be mediocre overall. Give it a shot if you’re a fan of this type of haunted house or found-footage type of presentation or if you’re curious about it while most others out there turned off by these factors should heed caution.
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