User Reviews

This poor man's copy of House on Haunted Hill (the remake, which also happened to feature Jeffrey Combs) and 13 Ghosts (the remake with a thoroughly miscast Tony Shalhoub) features a flamboyant and huckster-ish impresario (Combs, in a role closely patterned on the impresario in HOHH) renovating an old house that was the scene of a mass murder into a haunted house attraction. The fact that the house was not torn down after the murders, and that it is on a residential street in a town rather than situated off some interstate highway exit is highly questionable, of course. The impresario has installed state-of-the-art holograms of scary faces and ghostly images, and hires a group of college students to serve as guides and hosts. Not a bad start, but the flat performances of the students is a dead giveaway that this will be just another clueless-teens-trapped-in-a-murder-house quickie. They will live to regret their decision to enter this particular house. In the end, it turns out the killer isn't who we may have thought it was, but the wrap-up is overly confusing for no particular reason. And the special effects can't hold a candle to the effects in HOHH or 13 GHOSTS. Combs tries his best in what amounts to a just plain bad movie.

This was shot on a budget and looks pretty good, but overall, the narrative made no sense.

The plot is that there was a famous murder by a religious fanatic foster care provider who beat her charges while quoting scripture to them. When they rebelled, she killed all of them. A neighborhood kid was a witness.

Flash forward... a woman had nightmares related to the house, and a haunted house profiteer sets up a complex haunted house with state of the art holograms. We discover that she is not the girl who found the house, but the house's sole survivor.

Overall, though, the movie is tame. Most of the kills (those involving women and children) are done in cutaway. And the twist comes about a mile off. The ending is ambiguous. Who killed everyone, anyway? Who cares.

Jeffrey Combs tries to inflate this into something better than the average dead teenager flick, but the whole notion of "You didn't really see holograms/ghosts killing people, it was the crazy chick all along" ending just didn't make sense.

Just dropped this from a 5 to a 3 just thinking about the plot illogic. First, that a kid who survived such a horror wouldn't be CLOSELY monitored and watched by authorities. Or that the building would be left standing. (Sorry, usually when a mass murder happens, they TEAR DOWN the building, and rightfully so.)

The expendable black guy(TM) stumbling around for a few minutes after being decapitated was just silly.

Jeffrey Combs' Walston Rey is an enthusiastic owner of haunted house attractions, preparing for his biggest and best yet, the old Darrode estate notorious for a massacre of orphans at the hands of their den mother. Claire(Meghan Ory)is the lone survivor of that massacre and her memories of that awful day are buried within her mind..encouraged by her therapist, Claire will coerce the students of her acting class to accept Rey's job offers to work in various roles in his new spook house, leading patrons through his "maze of horrors" utilizing state of the art digital holograph technology( a sort of Illusion system)to scare them. What none of them could ever imagine is that the evil spirit of Janet Darrode(Diane Salinger)would corrupt the computer program using holographic killers as tools to murder and maim. The reason behind the slaughter, that great mystery, will become known once it is unlocked in Claire's mind. Ms. Darrode, we come to find out through snippets of memory which return to Claire as she spends time in the house, was a religious fanatic who whipped her children repeatedly while they quoted verse, believing them to be demon possessed. Claire, in a sense, is the one "who got away" and it seems that Janet wants to claim one final soul so she can be "acquitted" for failing to finish the job. In this movie we are led to believe that holographic killers can gain enough physical essence to attack real human beings thanks to Janet's infecting the programming which brought them to life..a bit too silly and far fetched for me personally, although there's an ending(a twist, I guess)that questions everything we witnessed take place once the doors and windows were locked shut and Ms. Darrode started up the killing spree. Other victims to emerge include two journalists who will write articles on the house, critiquing how effective it is(learning first hand)and Rey's haunted house crew. The gore which does appear on screen, is mostly digital, a head taken off with a fountain squirting blood upward like a geyser and long fingernails impaling another. Combs understands his character is a ham and approaches him that way, amusing in his speeches to his employees about fear and the audience.

By-the-numbers gory house movies usually steal from the best (13 Ghosts, House on Haunted Hill, etc.), then season with a little Rob Zombie. In this case, it's a tedious slog through a familiar laundry list of action. A bad script, poor direction and cheap effects only make the journey all the more boring.

Suspension-of-disbelief is impossible from the beginning. A young girl enters a spooky house and immediately stumbles on a bloody child's body. Rather than react like most people, and run in terror, she calmly continues on, discovering one horror after another. What finally shocks her isn't any gore, but an attempt at a startling, visual cliché.

The rest of the movie is the usual tepid broth of skeptics getting killed by supernatural forces, and threadbare "Quick! Run! But there's Now Way Out!" scenes. There's little to see here that hasn't been done many times before, except maybe in a porn parody.

Fourteen years ago (even though some of the cars were from the mid-2000s), Claire (Meghan Ory) was horrifically traumatized in the "Darrode House," the site of a brutal massacre that left seven children dead by the hand of their evil foster mother Miss Darrode. In present day, Claire is plagued with night terrors, panic attacks, and other psychological ailments rooted deep in her suppressed memories of that terrible day. To fight these fears, her psychiatrist tells her that she must return to the scene of the event and face what happened there so many years ago. She gets her chance when her acting troupe, which is composed of a jock, a black guy, a goth, a slutty blonde, etc. (seriously), decides to join a high-tech haunted house for Halloween. But, uh oh! The creator of the haunted house, entrepreneur Walston (played by horror icon Jeffrey Combs), has chosen none other than the Darrode House itself in which to stage the house of terrors! As expected, Miss Darrode and her house are not happy with their unwelcome visitors. . .

As many horror fans will tell, it is very difficult to make a great "haunted house" movie. Even those who believe in the paranormal often do not fall for many of the tricks & scares that are frequent in ghost-themed horror films. Other than 'Paranormal Activity,' it has been several years since the U.S. has had an overly successful (critically and/or financially) haunted house film, instead having mediocre pictures like 'An American Haunting' or 'The Haunting in Connecticut.' One of the major failures of the subgenre comes from the lack of subtlety that ends up ruining any chance at real terror. That being said, it seems that 'Dark House' was never made to be 'the next great haunted house film.' It was aware of its limitations and, instead of true fear, it went for the next best things in horror: fun & blood. And, while a darker 'Dark House' may have been a welcome idea, this way worked well enough for a fun evening.

On the technical side of the film, there isn't a lot to complain about. Unfortunately, there isn't too much to be praised either. The cast had its flaws, especially when they took their roles as the haunted house characters. Making this worse was the ridiculous dialogue written for them, turning what would just be laughable stereotypes into something much, much more annoying and frustrating. Luckily, Jeffrey Combs, as he so often does in films like this, acts as saviour. It would be difficult to write a character for Combs that would be anything close to annoying, and that's why viewers will be grateful to have this slightly creepy, often funny madman in the film. Looking past the dialogue, the writing isn't too awful. The story progression and overall plot was fairly trite, but it was delivered in such a way that made it entertaining enough to look past its general lack of originality. As for the element of this film that seemed to matter most, the special effects were quite wavering in their quality. The "hologram" effects & transitions were actually done fairly well, but the quality quickly degraded anytime the holograms interacted/attacked the humans. Given the budget, however, the FX weren't really a disappointment.

Overall, this is not going to be a film that will go down in the annals of horror history as great or memorable cinema. However, viewers looking for an entertaining evening with a few jump scares and some gore will find enjoyment in 'Dark House.'

Final Verdict: 6/10.

-AP3-

This movie was successful in being creepy. Anytime you take innocent children into account that's not so hard to do. The acting was a bit over done. And I did notice one hilarious mistake. When Paula Clark falls down the stairs, the guy runs to her and refers to her as "Miss Cummings". Which is the actresses last name. Ooooopsy! Also tends to get a little confusing towards the end. All along you think you know whats happening. Then you find out the main character is not who you think she was. The haunted house looks like a lot of fun though. Wish there were some more like it. Without the holograms that come to life and kill you of course. I give this movie props for taking on some heavy subject matter. Religious fanatics, torture of children, murder of children. I also love how they incorporate the iron maiden. All together, not totally horrifying, but a good scare. And yes, it could indeed be worse!

I just couldn't believe how poor this movie was! The description sounded good and it's got positive reviews and even won an award. I honestly had to double check I'd got the right movie.

First off the acting, it's terrible except for the mad hag who is OK. These characters are supposedly drawn from "an advanced acting class" if you can believe that. Imagine what the basic acting class would have been like.

The plot is ridiculous and so incoherent that it requires two previously unseen characters at the end to explain it, and then throws in a twist that's just pointless.

The computer malfunction is especially bad. You keep getting shots of it with various warnings like firewall breached, virus detected, malfunction, accidentally installed Vista etc - we get it! On top of all that this film wouldn't scare a five year old. You could take the basic idea of people working in a haunted house being picked off and make a really good scary movie, it's a shame they didn't have the skill to do it.

Thinly sketched characters you don't care about, lame jump shocks with loud noises, incoherent plot, crappy acting and no real tension..yep, it's a modern horror movie!

This is absolute crap. A cheap rip-off of House on Haunted Hill. Lots of hissing. Lots of bad gore. This wouldn't pass for a middle school video project. It's hard to believe a studio actually paid for this drivel. The only good thing to say was it wasn't longer than it was. I watched this on Chiller which meant this poor excuse for horror was interrupted regularly by commercials. Don't waste your time!!!!A drive-in theater wouldn't even show this......There is a brief minute or two near the end where you get to hear some pseudo-Satanic language that is almost scary but her makeup and hair are so hilariously over the top that you laugh instead of feeling afraid.

I picked up this movie on a boring Monday night. It seemed like a good choice what with a bunch of young friends hanging out in a haunted house.

The ambiance here didn't fit the movie. The lighting was too bright for most scenes and the music was a bit off. The sounds were also off. I think they sacrificed all the production funds for special effects, which were cool, but not great.

The plot is simple: a haunted house producer hires aspiring acting students to perform in his latest production. They agree and then get killed one by one. At the end, there's a little twist, but I won't tell you.

I liked this movie; however, I think it would have done better if it decided to be either a horror movie or a comedy-horror, or comedy. With a higher budget, it could've been something great but for what it had as funds, it should have been made as a comedy horror. Either way, if you missed your guild's run through Ice Crown Citadel, pop in this video and enjoy.

This review will most definitely contain spoilers. But, since I cannot in good conscience recommend that anyone watch this film, I don't feel that bad about divulging pieces of the "plot." I do not like writing bad reviews. Really, I try to find redeeming qualities in most movies, which is also why I find myself watching the entirety of movies that I wished I'd stopped five minutes in. This is one of those movies.

I knew within the first three minutes that this was not going to be a good movie. The fake blood thrown all over the stuffed animals during the opening credits solidified my premonition of terribleness. I could not help but feel distracted by the copious amounts of watery, randomly distributed blood dripping from the dolls, posters, and stuffed bears throughout the beginning. Don't get me wrong, I love a good, bloody horror film a la Evil Dead, but this wasn't that.

Then, in a brief glimpse of hope, three precocious little girls appeared, and I always love precocious film children. I even enjoyed the dialogue: "You can't go in there!" "Watch me." But, alas, everything went downhill from there.

To begin with, why would the brave little girl who entered the supposedly scary Darrode House not scream when she saw several dead children strewn throughout the house? It takes an eye seen through a keyhole to make her scream. Seriously? Not even the woman jamming her hand down the disposal in the kitchen sink gleaned a tiny ounce of fear? Okay, sure, fine, whatever.

We move on...

The characters are nothing less than stereotypical, teen-or-young-adult horror kill-offs. There's even a token black guy, but he's not the first to die, which I guess is progress. I wanted to believe that Jeffrey Combs, who we should all remember from such films as Re-Animator and The Frighteners, would redeem the film, but I was disappointed. That is not to say his portrayal of the energetic horror-attraction creator extraordinaire wasn't what it was supposed to be. It was. But, it wasn't enough to redeem any part of this mess of a film.

I am generally a fan of B horror movies, especially those from horror fest series. I can usually recognize the work put into making a low budget film look and feel great. This movie was simply lacking in every area from writing, to direction, to editing and special effects. On the latter, the special effects were, simply put, terrible. Not only that, but they were used far too frequently to be scary or even funny.

On that note, I wanted the film to end up being funny. If it wasn't going to be scary or even good, at least it could reach for campy. Some of the dialogue almost hit the mark. I even thought I might see some funny lesbian subplot at one point due to a quick line exchanged between catty-blonde-bimbo-actress and lesbian-blonde-horror-attraction-creator. Alas, this never occurred, and the humor ceased as quickly as it came. Oh, but I really do hate it when I vomit noxious green gases. That's always a bummer.

By the time the twist was revealed, I just did not care anymore. I did, however, feel a bit perturbed by the children's decision to burn the Bibles that Mrs. Bat-Crap-Crazy Darrode was misinterpreting and abusing instead of, oh, I don't know, killing her. Would that not have solved their problems? And I am sure the authorities would have forgiven them given the abusive nature of the situation. Then again, we wouldn't have a movie, would we?

Oh, and nice recap at the end.

I love good haunted house movies. I really do. I grew up watching the original William Castle pictures, House on Haunted Hill and 13 Ghosts, over and over again. When those two films were remade, and when those loose remakes turned out to be absolutely terrible, I more than threw up in my mouth. I threw up on Tony Shalhoub. (Not that I dislike Tony Shalhoub, but why was he in Thir13en Ghosts?).

Dark House is the same caliber as Thir13en Ghosts and the House on Haunted Hill remake. It's not scary, it's not well-made, it's not even funny. If you listen to me, you'll avoid this film... unless, of course, you want to write a bad review, then by all means watch this movie for plenty of bad review fodder.

My husband and I had to watch this film almost two full times through back to back to attempt to figure out what was going on. It starts off with a young girl about 9 from the looks of her walking into a house of a mass murder but instead of bursting into tears and running away as most little girls would this one slowly looks around at every dead body. Whoever wrote this and directed must not have had children. As if that wasn't odd enough it cuts to a woman in her 20s waking up from a nightmare 14 years later only to learn she is actually now a college student taking acting classes with one of every campy horror cliché. Dumb blonde, jock, black kid, angst filled goth girl and so on. The acting is terrible and it reminds you of your children's school play but not as adorable.

Now we have these college kids going to work at the same house the mass murders took place in which is unlikely this house would realistically be sold or open to the public in any way after the slaughtering of children. For the next hour we are to sit through every predictable cheesy horror ploy. It goes very slow and at some points you are not sure what is going on and what direction they are trying to go with this.

Meghan Ory is the lead. A nice looking girl. The best actor among these kids but the end is a disaster. After spending the longest hour and a half you could imagine leading you to believe you are following at least for the most part what is going on to who and how they inject a random end scene to frustrate you.

The last 2 minutes of the film cut to a woman in her mid 30s standing in front of the house with a young jock. Stereotypical meat-head type you would find in B flick movies from the 70s. This alone was confusing. It never occurred to me this woman could possibly be one of the children let alone the little girl from the beginning of the film grown up. They said 14 years have passed in the beginning of this mess which means the adult should be around 23 years old not a 30 something. Sure enough she walks in , how you ask? Apparently anyone can get in this house at any time. Once you get through the 2-3 lines that were said more like a town play of "The King and I" circa 1952, over the top as if she would twirl around the stage gazing up at the skies breaking out into song you realize you have no idea what happened. The urge to laugh at this bad acting is tempered by pure confusion.

This was the ending. I look at my husband and ask what happened? What was that? Who was that? He didn't know either. Frustrated we just wasted all this time we went to IMDb to try and put a name and character to the face and figure out her role in the story. The actress was Angela Gots playing Tammy. Who is Tammy? I never heard the name Tammy used once. There was a whole separate movie a bad one but a movie and a separate story in the last 2 minutes. At this point we are sure we are not crazy here. There was no character Tammy. It is like they needed to hit a certain time limit and took any random woman and asked her if she could recite these 3 lines. We rewatched the beginning with the little girl. No Tammy, no inclination this child would be the ending. Went through the middle, no Tammy. The ending with the actress herself no mention of Tammy. Of course we are confused. What kind of games is this movie and IMDb playing! Having the lead girl (Meghan Ory) be the one who did it all would be predictable but at least it would not be quite as ridiculous and she was the best actor in the cast. Overall it took over 3 hours to attempt to understand a 90 minute film. I can't believe a studio made this, my goodness!