Haunt follows a group of friends on Halloween night as they decide to go to a haunted house. Along the way, one of the group, Harper - played by Katie Stevens - suspects a man in a devil mask stalking the group. When they get to the haunted house, they’re forced to surrender their cellphones. As they make their way through the house, they soon begin encountering actors, all of whom are also wearing odd masks similar to the one seen earlier, and as they go through each setting in the house, they soon begin to realize things may not all just be an act.
It’s a haunted house, but it’s real! The setup for this movie is standard, and it’s pretty easy to predict where it’s headed right from the start. The movie plays up a lot of known horror tropes to move things along and get scares. There’s a scene of a character pretending to get hurt as a joke, only for the scene to result in someone actually getting hurt. There are moments of characters seeing something they clearly know they shouldn’t be touching and deciding to walk towards it anyway, which sure enough winds up being the wrong decision. Characters constantly find themselves in situations that will find horror fans who love shouting at the screen having a field day.
However, while the film mostly plays it safe in terms of story, it fully embraces its predictability, and decides to have some fun with its cliched setups through some really nice direction. If there’s one thing that really works well about this movie, it’s Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ fantastic work behind the camera. They do a solid job building suspense in each scene, and choose not to rely on cheap jump scares as a way of keeping the audience on their feet. The way in which scenes are lit can often feel creepy, and the way in which it may go from quiet to loud often feel natural, and can be unsettling at times.
And despite its familiarity, it actually does get better as it goes along, especially as it reaches the halfway point. The film leans into its slasher roots in the second half of the film, and turns into something of a fun action-horror film. The set pieces feel unique and the moments of the group going toe-to-toe with their tormentors often feel very creative, especially one moment in which there’s a character who has to avoid a trap set up by one of the house’s residents and tries to find a way to turn it back around on them. Once the film kicks things into high energy mode, it stays consistent with that energy.
There’s even an interesting twist as to who the tormentors are, though it’s one that ultimately doesn’t get explored as much as it should have. Which leads to this film’s biggest problem, being that the characters are all severely underwritten here. And it’s understandable to a certain degree. Beck and Woods try keeping the pacing tight and try to get things moving along pretty quickly, and don’t want to spend too much time focusing on backstory that doesn’t play too much of a part in the film later on.
However, as I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of elements about this movie that feel a bit standard, and the characters are one of them. When they’re introduced, none of them really say or do anything that really make them stand out. All the actors do a fine job with what they’re given and do give as committed of a performance as they can all possibly give. But not much is really learned about any of them, and outside of one or two solid quips in the beginning - including one funny moment in which one of the group drives everyone else to the house and attempts to charge them simply because he’s an Uber driver - none of their dialogue is really unique or interesting.
And that causes the movie to shoot itself in the foot down the line. As these characters are placed in these tense situations, it’s hard to truly care what ultimately happens to them because there’s no emotional connection to them. They all feel like stock characters, all present simply to service the bloody kill scenes or creative set pieces. And while it is fun to see these characters go up against these haunted house residents, it’s difficult to truly care which of them make it through this entire ordeal because they never really made much of an impact when they were introduced, and they never say or do much to truly make up for that fact.
Haunt is a flawed movie, due to its predictable set up and thinly written characters. It’s hard to truly care about what happens to these characters, though both the solid acting and great atmospheric direction from Scott Beck and Bryan Woods do make up for that fact at times. The film could have explored some elements it introduces a bit more, but at the very least still manages to have some fun with some creative set pieces and bloody action scenes. It’s a respectable entry in the slasher genre, though may cause some who watch it to desire so much more by the end.
Recommendation: Proceed With Caution
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