A young woman and her friends run around her house Scooby-Doo style until eventually they all die. Okay, maybe I’m being too harsh, but the entirety of the film does focus around the same three people running around the same house for an hour and a half, investigating noises and looking for clues. What does that sound like to you? Granted this movie probably has more blood and death than the lovable children’s cartoon, however I think it could have benefited from a hippie with the munchies and a talking dog – if only to provide some additional entertainment, and I use the word “additional” loosely.
Don’t feel bad if you get half an hour into the movie and have no idea what’s going on – I didn’t either. The film opens with a man and his daughter playing hide-and-go-seek in the woods. The man’s daughter stumbles upon a giant steam-like wall and they both stand in awe of it. Cut to next scene, don’t worry, we come back to the man and his daughter again at the VERY end of the movie. For now, just let it puzzle you. The next scene shows us a crib in a house and blood coming out of it – when suddenly two young women and a young man are shown breaking into a house – these are our main characters. We learn the house is about to be demolished and that it used to belong to one of the young women. Once inside, the home doesn’t appear to have been abandoned very long as there isn’t any noticeable dust, and the home appears to be well maintained for an abandoned house. None of the actors acknowledge this fact so I’m assuming we’re not supposed to notice, either.
At first, it does seem creepy watching the three of them walk around the house, not knowing what’s around each corner, but don’t get excited because it wears off after you realize this is the whole movie. I will admit there are a couple of good scenes but they are ruined almost as fast as they are shown. One of these scenes portrays one of the young women finding a key under a bed. After picking up the key, all of the eyes disappear from all of the stuffed animals in the room. The scene doesn’t make a lot of sense but it’s creepy to watch. This is followed shortly after by another scene where the young woman opens the closet door and we see a dimly lit stuffed panda in the center. Suddenly, a pair of glowing eyes appear and even more suddenly the scene is ruined by cheesy sound effects. This scene would have been ten times creepier without the sound effects, but instead we get a sudden reminder of the quality of the film via loud obnoxious noises.
After 30 minutes we discern the main young woman was three-years old when she last saw her mom in the house – this fact only made my previous observation of the lack of dust more pointed, the house does not look to have been abandoned for 20 years – and that her mom went crazy and tried killing her whole family. Apparently, her mom blamed the house for her actions (Amityville horror, anyone?), and now the house is up to no good once again. Soon we find out the mysterious steam wall from the opening scene of the film has surrounded the house and trapped the three inside, making them hallucinate killer dogs and awful images. They manage to kill one of the dogs but it reappears and multiplies, leading them to believe they’re just seeing the same dog at several different locations around the house.
In the end, we learn the house is actually an evil house that can teleport all over the world and make people kill each other. I don’t want to get into the details about that because it’s just ludicrous and raises more questions in an already confusing movie. Wouldn’t people notice a house appearing, or disappearing, out of thin air? Who sells the house once it appears, or do people just see an empty house and decide to move in? Does this mean the house was originally in the woods in the beginning of the movie? Well, it turns out the house is possessed and once it latches on to one person, it makes them kill five people – I don’t know why, it just does. Well, the main character kills her friends and stabs herself in the uterus, killing her unborn child (with almost no convincing, either), and shortly after falls dead on the floor having bled to death. The movie ends back at the scene in the woods (see, I told you we’d go back), and we see what I can only assume is the main character’s mother or distant relative as the little girl.
This movie is…
If you’re looking for something incredibly confusing with no sense of direction, this might be for you.
Cheers and goodnight.
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