Director: Cate Devaney
Year: 2020
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural Slasher
Plot:
Desperate to undertake a special challenge, a woman joins a group of friends attempting to visit the supposedly haunted house where a special serial killer was said to hang out and torture his victims, only to find they’ve summoned the killer to use their darkest fears to kill them one by one.
Review:
This was a terminally bland genre effort without much going for it. The fact that the central premise for this one could’ve been a lot of fun, but ultimately goes nowhere, is the main drawback to this one, since it goes off in a vastly different direction. The main idea, getting the group out to the house by looking into the story of the hatter who went insane and burned down the house and killing everyone inside, is worthwhile enough at getting that displayed nicely enough, but even this is massively disappointing. There’s so little about his backstory that’s even explored here, from how he went insane to why he killed everyone in the house fire, to what the main purpose of the exploration is supposed to prove, and it leaves the film without much in the way of a terrifying villain. The idea of him turning their darkest fears against them as a means of setting up the death scenes could’ve had something going for it by creating some gruesome moments with the gory outcomes being somewhat enjoyable, but it’s too little too late to save this one.
Outside of this, the film is just so dull and lifeless that there’s little about it that comes off with any kind of interest in what’s going on. The main group here is incredibly unlikable and focuses on the same series of cliche character setups that are usually populated in these kinds of films, feature no real chance to get to know them before being thrust into the assignment to stay there, and are shown to be doing the same thing over and over again as a result of the figure’s influence so nothing is really that impressive. It goes so long between these kinds of interactions, with the hallucinations between the characters who are driven by the killer start to take shape that even the atmosphere of the house starts to lose its impact, since this is a genuinely creepy locale for everything to take place, and eventually it all seems impossibly to figure who’s alive and who’s being targeted by the killer. Overall, these all come together to hold this back against those potentially intriguing aspects from the location, original idea, and the production value.
Overview: 0.5/5
A generally unremarkable and barely worthwhile genre effort, this one had the potential to be a decently cheesy genre effort, but it gets let down by some big, crippling issues that can’t save it. This is really only for the most undiscerning fans of this particular style or who are fans of this kind of public-domain ripoff, as most everyone else should heed extreme caution, if not outright avoid it.
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