Dark House

See if you can stay with me. A foster mother brutally slaughters all of her charges. Years later, a young woman who witnessed the aftermath is now an acting student, and she and her classmates get a gig doing some sort of haunted house/horror movie thing in the same house the murders occurred in. And it's not just any movie: a state of the art holographic system has been installed in the house which can create all sorts of zany monsters, murderers, ghosts and ghouls. Only it turns out the house is actually haunted by the spirit of the murderer, who somehow possesses the holographic equipment and makes the holograms come to life and murder the actors for real.

I mean, just read that fucking description and tell me if it sounds like a good movie. It's not. About the nicest things I can say about Dark House is that it co-stars Jeffrey Combs (always a plus), and that I frequently laughed during the film. I'm sure it didn't help watching it after a legitimately good haunted house movie, but even if we hadn't I don't know what could have saved such a stupid premise. I mean, why even introduce the holograms at all? We're used to ghosts doing whatever the fuck they want in movies, why not just have the ghosts of the house turn into a bunch of shitty looking monster effects?

Another weird thing is that the film feels the need to throw in about 8 unnecessary twists at the end that don't help explain anything. And some of the twists are that the earlier twists weren't twists. The house is haunted, then it's not, then it is, then holy shit do not watch this movie sober.

Rating: D+