Your ghost cliché movie
Parents buy a creepy old house that’s haunted and … yawn
I love quality ghost stories and haunted houses – but this isn’t one of them. If you like, however, you can watch the movie and make a drinking game out of predicting what happens next. The problem is that if you may end up with alcohol poisoning.
Fairuza Balk plays Hannah, a mother ravaged by guilt because she got into an accident that left her son in a coma. Maybe as a distraction or maybe to just shake up her life a bit, she’s drawn to an old home in need of renovation. She buys it with her husband, begins to bring the house to life, then she starts to hear voices, see things and one predictable thing happens after another. The only interesting part of this ultra-lackluster and poorly edited farce was that Hannah’s husband (Greg Bryk) is a psychiatrist and constantly responds to his wife’s ghost stories with logic, common sense and the Romulan version of Dr. Spock.
Balk, who is usually reliable, isn’t completely awful, but sometimes her heart didn’t seem to be in it. Melanie Orr’s directing offered nothing new and her attempts at scares were completely ineffective, making the movie appear to be a mid-day television show for an older and safe playing crowd.
This is Paul Germann’s first script and I can only wonder why he went down one well-worn path after another. However, since he’s been on over seventy projects, usually as a sound editor, it’s possible he got a production team of friends to get the movie made. Otherwise, there is nothing here of merit to warrant green lighting the story.
Although I’d never recommend this to anyone, the last ten minutes of the movie are so outrageously laughable, you may want to take a look. Then again, if you are having trouble sleeping, this may be just the medicine you need.
One star for the house.
0.5 out of 5 stars