Another Haunted Lock-In
Main Cast: Sarah Tyson, Tyler Miller
Director: Brendan Rudnicki
What’s the plural of doofus? Because I just watched a movie with a whole gang of them.
Apparently THE HAUNTING OF THE MURDER HOUSE was written (I know, I was surprised, too!) and directed by Brendan Rudnicki but if most of those lines weren’t ad libbed by four people who have no business ad libbing a greeting let alone an entire movie…
I’m just left baffled.
The “story”, for what it’s worth, concerns a group of ghost-hunting streamers who’ve been down on their luck lately, so they decide to investigate the “murder house” where a man named Lester would don a clown mask and kill everyone he kidnapped and brought back to his lair. Lester said it wasn’t him, that he was possessed, and now he’s dead so these four morons break into his boarded-up house, chain themselves inside all night, and go through a series of “challenges” meant to provoke whatever ghosts might be inside.
I’ve got no problem with the plot of the movie; it’s typical cliché stuff for this genre. But the “actors”, for lack of a better word. Holy God, get these people off my screen.
I know I can’t PROVE they were making it up as they went, the IMDb page DOES name a “writer” in the crew, but I would stake my GhostTube app on it. And if there was a script and these folks were “performing” it? Well, they need to get work at the post office because acting is not their thing.
And I’m a little ashamed to admit it, it wasn’t just the acting, or lack of. A couple of them I just hated looking at. Maybe it’s the old man in me, but what the hell are kids doing with their hair these days??? Can we just not?
The most surprising thing I found about this cast (Sarah Tyson as Harper, Tyler Miller as Kai, Dylan DeVane as Dylan—shocker!—and Kellan Rudnicki—why does that last name seem familiar?—as Kel) is that they all have more credits than this. Granted, most of those credits are in Rudnicki productions which include other titles like THE HAUNTING OF THE SUICIDE HOUSE and THE HAUNTING OF THE MORGAN ESTATE, but they have them.
The one plus I found to THE HAUNTING OF THE MURDER HOUSE was its length. It’s a mere hour and 18 minutes and then you’re back to your regular life. I don’t know if I could have handled a 90-minute version of this. This seems to be a trend in found footage, portraying a ghost hunting teams that bites off more than it can chew. Sometimes it’s done so very right (GRAVE ENCOUNTERS), but more often than not, it’s a mediocre effort. In this case, however, this might just be the worst one I’ve seen. And, again, I can’t entirely blame the script or the acting, but I really, really just hated looking at these actors. Don’t get me wrong, the other things were frigging TERRIBLE, but I also hated that this was a visual medium.
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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