Yesterday, I was finally able to watch a movie I’ve been dying to see for a few years now: A 2019 film called Haunt.
I suppose it’s worth mentioning that I, in real life, actually can’t go to haunts with live actors. It’s not a matter of being scared of the imagery or anything like that, but I have full blown panic attacks if I try. I think it’s more of a social anxiety thing to be honest; I’ve never quite been able to explain it, but, while I’d very much like to design one someday, or even work in one, I simply can’t deal with being a patron (one of my experiences will get its own blog post one day though) so I rely on things like YouTube walkthroughs and movies like The Houses October Built to fulfill these types of needs for me. When Haunt was first announced, I actually assumed it would be something like the latter, only minus the found footage angle, which immediately interested me. However, since direct-to-streaming horror films are so hit-and-miss, I waited and waited for it to become free to me, and now it’s finally arrived on Hulu.
And it was certainly worth the wait.
Here is the trailer if you wish to view it.
Haunt starts out similarly to many other horror films. It introduces us to a bunch of college-age protagonists, the most notable being a young girl with a mysterious past and an abusive boyfriend, named Harper. I immediately had her pegged as final girl, and if you’ve ever watched a horror movie in your life, you know that’s not a spoiler. Harper heads out to a Halloween party with her roommates, they meet two guys, and decide to head off to find some spookier entertainment.
Harper believes they’re being followed, likely by her abusive boyfriend Sam, so they turn up a strange street and stumble across one of those road signs that’s usually used to alert drivers to hazardous conditions, declaring the location of a haunted house. It’s shady, it’s weird, but it’s Halloween and some people enjoy extreme experiences, and so the group makes the turn.
They are greeted, or met by, I suppose I should say, as he doesn’t really greet them, a man in a simple, vintage-style clown mask.
After doing some silent clown tricks, and having the group sign waivers that include leaving their phones outside in a lock box, they enter the haunt.
Now, the group’s time inside the haunt is extremely effective in the way that it plays out, initially, in very simple classic jumpscares, but gradually builds up, and always makes you wonder when it’s gonna start getting bad. For the most part it’s relatively tame, save for some live spiders, until a character in a witch mask shows up.
Witch’s whole deal is that she stands behind a chain link fence, making a “show” out of killing what appears to be an innocent person who stumbled into the haunt previously, in front of the current group. While initially horrified, the group quickly realizes it’s all a part of the show, or so they think, and continue on. But things start to get weirder, as one of the group, Bailey, ends up with her wrist slit after attempting one of those “guess the body part” gags, like where peeled grapes represent eyeballs, and another, Mallory, is seemingly killed by Witch.
By now the group definitely wants out, and they eventually run into a guy in a ghost mask, who is the only one of the haunters that we’ve heard speak by this point and apparently is named “Mitch”.
It’s worth noting that he, aesthetically speaking, is my absolute favorite of the group and I am obsessed with his look.
Aside from pumpkins, I am the biggest sucker for a simple, vintage ghost.
My next-favorite is probably Zombie, who doesn’t have as prominent a role but looks amazing.
Anyway, “Mitch” (if that is his real name) AKA Ghost lures the group into a false sense of security, apologizing for what’s happened, swearing what happened to Mallory was just something for the show and she’s outside waiting for them, etc. I almost buy it for a bit, wondering if he’s some kind of survivor of the haunt who’s now been forced into partaking in it himself, but no, he is actually just a decent actor and plays more than his part in helping the group get picked off one by one.
Over the course of some intense scenes, where you kind of feel like you’re inside a claustrophobic and possibly deadly haunted house yourself, we start to see some face reveals of our haunters, and I have to say the concept is pretty cool. It’s explained by a normal looking man in a vampire mask that the haunters are some sort of cult and have modified themselves as much as they possibly can, to emulate the true faces of the masks they wear. They delight in ripping off the faces of others, and apparently killing is how one “earns their face” and joins the cult/haunt.
In contrast with the vintage masks and old-school simplicity of the haunt itself, I absolutely love how extreme they are, underneath it all!
Once again, aesthetically speaking, I think this was a great move. And, not gonna lie, if I could get away it, I would totally modify my face into a pumpkin. It’s not even a question. I’m much more of a pumpkin than I am a human and I appreciate these guys’ dedication. Like, seriously. I bet they’re never mistaken for once-a-yearers.
Though I do have to ask: Is Witch modified or is she just meant to be a very old woman?
Anyway, as I predicted in the beginning, Harper is our final girl, though her potential new love interest survives as well, and I guess she realizes how strong she is after her bout with the haunters. She realizes as she lay in the hospital that any of the haunters who may have survived know where she lives because of the phone and all, and the movie ends with her booby trapping her home in a similar way to how the haunt played out for her, ultimately killing Clown, the last known survivor of, at least this chapter of, the extreme body-mod haunter cult.
I kind of wish the haunters would have prevailed, but that’s probably only because I wanted to see more of them. Here’s hoping there’s another chapter of this cult out there somewhere (I’m looking up at my own collection of vintage style masks as I write this and seeing all sorts of possibilities.) and we eventually get a sequel.
All in all I was very impressed with this movie and see it becoming a go-to for me. It’s hard to explain, but there are certain things I look for when it comes to movies set on Halloween, and this one definitely just has it. While similar in its way to The Houses October Built, I also saw elements of one my top-three favorite movies, 31. (One day I’ll do a long post about that one because I have so much to say about it.) Haunt touches on things that have been done before but also manages to do its very own thing, and do it well, while also holding onto a classic Halloween atmosphere that puts you right in the action.
Maybe it was my real-life aversion to haunted attractions with live actors talking, but I definitely stayed on the edge of my seat for this one. My only wish is that we could have learned a little more about our haunters and their motivation, and perhaps why they chose the monsters they did to represent them. If they truly are all dead and gone, maybe this could all be explained in a prequel? I just really want to see more!
I am left to wonder, though, when I watch movies like this…Is my strange inability to enter a real-life haunt, perhaps for the best?
Stay spooky, my friends.
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