I’ve never been to a haunted house, but I’ve always wanted to go. Instead of leaving the house I decided to find a movie to scratch that itch. I can avoid people if I keep trying hard enough. Haunt is a film written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods that came out just a couple weeks ago. If those names sound familiar that means that you stayed for thirty seconds into the end credits for A Quiet Place to see their names under “Written by.” Though Haunt lacks the emotional impact of A Quiet Place, it’s still a pretty fun film that can be frustrating at times.
Now, while I won’t be spoiling that much I will be referencing events that happen later on in the film. You can take this, leave this article, and then decide to watch the film first. The movie holds very few surprises and the one twist the film does have I won’t bring up. Even if this twist doesn’t really have much bearing on the plot in the end. My point is that the stuff that I bring up doesn’t really matter that much.
Haunt’s plot is pretty simple. After Harper leaves her abusive boyfriend she goes for a night out on Halloween to drink which inevitably lowers her defenses (I don’t get it either). We then followher and list of other characters, whose names you are likely to forget, to an extreme haunted house. I think most people would assume it’s a bad idea to take a traumatized friend to a place like this, but I’m not here to tell people how to live their lives. Once they go into the haunted house they find that the people that are dressed like psychopaths are actually psychopaths. Who would’ve guessed?
The film consists of many fun and tense set pieces that takes full advantage of the Halloween haunted house setting. We see the film take the character through different rooms and using haunted house type puzzles to play with the characters. It’s just unfortunate that the characters are hard to care about.
Are the characters unlikeable?
No. They just don’t leave much of an impression. Even the one character that gets defined by her abusive ex was not only forgettable, but felt pointless. If feels like the only reason for this subplot to be in the film was so that the ex could bring the car for some of the surviving characters to escape in. Even if the movie was able to use this subplot in a way that made me care about her, that’s still only one out of six characters that I would’ve cared about. I couldn’t help but wish that the writers would have focused on the chemistry of the characters to get me to care instead of looking at the backstory of one character. This could have been achieved with more effort. For one, these people worked on A Quiet Place which uses the chemistry between characters to create a pretty likeable cast, and it does this with very little spoken word. Granted, I don’t know how much of this was added after writer and director John Kransinki came onto the project, but they were the ones that were originally able to sell the script. And going back to Haunt, there are a couple moments in the film where the back and forth between make them seem like real people with real relationships with each other. But the backstory of an abusive ex, and later revealed to have an abusive father as well, wasn’t really a personality. It was just a fact made up for one of the characters that took up screen time that the film could’ve used to focus on something else.
Despite the poor characterization, the film still does succeed in creating tension. This is in large part thanks to the filmmakers’ ability to let scenes breath and some outstanding sound design. Like when the first villain takes off his mask, the scene actually takes it’s time doing this. The music mixed with the villain’s heavy breathing helps add to this. And when the character takes off his mask, we just look at him for a bit. It’s quite effective. Also the film’s use of haunted house and escape room tropes help add some fun thrills.
Unfortunately for all the good choices the film makes there is also some confusing ones. At the start of the film we see a character find a flyer for the haunted house attraction that they visit.
Now let me ask, what do you think they do after this?
If you thought they go directly to that house, you are wrong. Instead they drive out to the middle of nowhere to find just any attraction and they later just run into the one the flyer was advertising. I really can’t figure out the reason for this choice. Why can’t they just go to where the flyer tells them to? Was it so we can have a moment where one of the characters think that they are being followed? Because you can still do that if you just have them just go from point A to B. When I see an ad for Burger King, I don’t just drive around looking for burgers elsewhere then decide on Burger King when I randomly find it. No! When I see an ad for Burger King that makes me want Burger King I just go to FUCKING BURGER KING!!!
Okay… This is a nothing problem, it doesn’t really mean that much when it comes to the story, but it’s such a weird choice for the movie to make. It’s one of those things that I just can’t stop thinking about.
There is more. Like there are moments where our heroes kill their attackers but then just leave their weapons on the ground. There was also a moment where I found myself saying: “Why are you standing right in front of they shotgun. Was this just a better shot?”
No joke. There’s a point in the movie where a character is walking about to a shotgun that’s on a timer (meaning no one is holding or aiming it) and she just walks up in front of it without moving to the side. Was the secret to life written inside the barrel of this gun? Because if not I have to assume it’s like this because it gave Beck and Woods a better shot. I know you sometime have to do things in a certain way to have it more visually pleasing, but I’m still seeing a stupid character do a stupid thing.
There were some things I was willing to buy. Like when they trust one of the attraction workers when he said that it was all tricks happening to them. I assumed that they were just in denial about the actual danger they were in and were wanting to hold onto the possibility that they are just in a show. But even this got stretched for me when the character decide to split off leaving some of them alone with this stranger.
With all this said, I still enjoyed watching the movie. It was fun to watch some of these characters either kill or get killed. I think if the movie was any longer I would be less inclined to accept it’s mistakes but it had just the right runtime and this might have been on Woods and Beck’s mind.
There are better horror movies you can be watching but if you are looking for something that you haven’t seen yet for this Halloween, you could do far worse than Haunt.
