#24 - Dark House (2009)
(dir. Darin Scott)
When Claire was young, she stumbled onto the scene of a mass murder in a local foster home. She was left emotionally scarred, and has repressed most of the memory. Now a college drama student, she takes a job in that same house, which has been converted to a horror "haunted house" attraction. She hopes to face her past trauma and move on, but instead finds that there is something evil in the house... The subtext here is how we use horror films as a way to confront the darker aspects of life - pain, fear, death, etc - in a comfortable and safe way.
That could make for a really interesting movie, but unfortunately, this is not it. This movie is really dumb. I'm pretty sure that it is aware of how dumb it is, and tries to have fun with it, but it's never quite funny enough (intentionally, anyway) to work as a comedy, nor scary enough to be an effective horror movie. If there is a statement about horror films here, it gets lost in the jumble of overacting and bad special effects. Jeffrey Combs is great as the owner/creator of the haunted house, and I wish he had a little bigger part, because he is really the only interesting thing about the movie.
I wouldn't call this outright terrible, because it does have a decent idea at its core, and I had fun watching it. However, it's not particularly well made in any way, so unless you are a big Jeffrey Combs fan or really love haunted house rides, I don't recommend it.
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