Haunt (2014)

"Haunt" is about the house where the Morello family lived. Dr. Janet Morello (Jacki Weaver) was a pediatrician. When they moved in though, their three teenage kids all suffer terrible unexpected deaths. Later, even her husband Franklin also fell dead. Ordinarily, a house with such a creepy history would have been left for abandonment already.

However, how could there be a horror movie if there was no foolhardy family who was still brave or desperate enough to live in that house despite its sinister past? Enter the Asher family, a couple who happened to also have three teenage kids, exactly like those of the Morellos. It did not take long though that strange things begin to happen to the new tenants.

The focus of this story was the middle boy, 18 year-old Evan (Harrison Gilbertson). One night, he met a pretty but mysterious girl Sam (Liana Liberato) whom he saw crying in the woods outside their house. The two became closer as they try to communicate with the spirits living inside the house with an old microphone set. Of course, their interaction with the ghosts did not stop there.

The presence of two-time Oscar Best Supporting Actress nominee Jacki Weaver gives the cast some credibility. She has this very unusually distinct face whom you can't shake off once you've seen it. The young lead cast, Gilbertson and Liberato, also did very well despite the offbeat love story they were made to portray. The girl Liana Liberato should really get a better break already than small films like this. She has some acting chops as she had already shown years back in the harrowing child molestation drama "Trust". 1980s film fans may also recognize Ione Skye of "River's Edge" and "Say Anything" fame. She plays Mrs. Asher here, though she was not really made to do too much.

I really liked the way this movie started. It boasts of excellent cinematography and imaginative special effects. The sets and the pace of story-telling was tense and creepy. As the story was reaching its climax though, it simply gave up and went nowhere. The back story given for the events were terribly plain, no thrill about it.

Overall, this film was a big disappointment. While the opening sequences promised another excellent haunted house movie, the ending scenes were simply mediocre, an appalling waste of potential and talented cast. 4/10.

Fmovies: Haunt is a very competent horror film because of its sinister atmosphere, competent direction and an interesting screenplay with some innovative elements. My favorite one of those elements was the electronic synthesizer of ghost voices, a kind of steampunk E.V.P. radio which allows communication with the deceased ones... or with whatever presence is rounding the haunted house. There are other ingenious elements in the screenplay, but I prefer not to reveal them in order to avoid spoilers. What I can reveal is that Liana Liberato and Harrison Gilbertson bring solid performances and have a perfect chemistry with each other as the "odd couple" with different methods and motivations to solve the mystery. I found the romantic sub-plot between their characters a bit irrelevant, but the investigation they make adequately combines the tense search of evidences with paused reflections about the origin of the supernatural events. Speaking of which, Haunt makes a good use of practical effects in order to bring the ghosts and appearances to shape, obtaining some good shocks and moments of a delicious suspense. On the negative side, some edition tricks and sonorous accents feel a bit excessive. Nevertheless, I found Haunt a very entertaining horror film with an interesting mystery, good scares and credible characters who, at the difference of many films from this genre, generate empathy on the audience. Comparing Haunt with other "haunted house" films from the last 5 years, I would place it below Insidious or The Conjuring, but above Sinister or any of the Paranormal Activity sequels.

Such a pity, this movie started with so much promise, then seemed to lose it's way and quite possibly money and time. Was building to quite an interesting spooky story, then WHAM!, out of nowhere it ends, with so many loose ends, so many questions, so many "eh!, but what about" questions. "why did that happen" moments. Quite honestly, you watch this and you feel, well, cheated!. Such a pity, there were a few, suspend your belief moments, but weren't too niggly. But ultimately, this movie was a mish mash of Coulda, woulda, shoulda moments it was just too hard to ignore or forgive. You watch this movie and you feel time was not on it's side. It's the shell of a movie that could have been.!!. ;(

Haunt fmovies. The Asher family buys an isolated manor where a tragedy happened with the previous owners, the Morello family, when the father and his three children died. The only survivor, the pediatrician Janet Morello (Jacki Weaver), sells the house to Alan Asher (Brian Wimmer) and his wife Emily (Ione Skye), and they move with their children, the teenagers Evan (Harrison Gilbertson) and Sara (Danielle Chuchran) and the girl Anita (Ella Harris).

The shy Evan meets the teenager Sam (Liana Liberato), who is abused by her father, and they start to see each other. Sam finds an old radio- like apparatus used to communicate with the dead in the attic and they decide to use it. Soon they learn that they have unleashed an evil force that is haunting them but Evan's parents do not believe in ghosts.

"Haunt" is a weak horror movie of haunted house where the only thing new is the apparatus that is a radio to communicate with the dead. The screenplay is boring and gives the sensation that something is missing to be a good story. Watching this movie is a waste of time even in a rainy and cold Saturday afternoon. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "A Face do Mal" ("The Face of the Evil")

I read about Haunt today in Fangoria Magazine and it really sounded like a cut above many of the genre films. Well, I looked it up, got my hands on a copy of it and sat down to see if it would give me some chills and thrills. No such luck.

For a ghost story that's complete with a haunted house, box that allows the living to communicate with the dead, and a pretty decent looking spirit, this is a complete snoozer. If I thought the first half was tedious and dull, the second half didn't really improve on that much.

A family moves into a house that has a history of several other family members dying there. How did they die? Why did they die? Why are the hauntings starting up again? Those questions are lost as viewers ask questions like do the parents actually have jobs or are they independently wealthy? The parents don't mind when a girl who shows up and starts bunking with their teenage son?

Truly, it's agony pointing out the plot holes because there are a huge number of them. There's a tiny bit of tension here and there, some of which is ruined by those lovely jarring scare noises when something happens on screen. It's just a sign of director who doesn't trust what he's putting in front of us to do the trick.

Simply put, don't waste your time. Haunt is a snoozer.

Very similar in look and feel to "The Conjuring" (2013) and "Insidious" (2010) but with central characters that are teenagers rather than adults. The similarities make it feel a bit formulaic, but it's a good formula. Scary and frightening like a haunted house movie (the movie's self-aware opening narration describes itself as a ghost story) ought to be, its intensity is too much for PG-13 but lacks the explicit violence and gore typical for R. Three jump moments were quite effective, which again indicates a PG-13 level of scariness, but the overall creepiness of the unfolding mystery is even more compelling. Rather than coming apart in the third act, the movie features a complete ending that wraps up and justifies the story. Kudos to the prop maker who created the vacuum tube-era radio box, one of the creepiest "characters" in the story. This movie is well-made, scary, and a welcome addition to the modern horror genre.