Starting to watch HAUNTER I had very few preconceptions. In fact, I had next to no prior insight at all. Keywords like "horror," "thriller," "ghost story" were all I had to go on. And as I do love a good horror, thriller, ghost story, I went for it - as you probably would too, if you were me.
The premise is an undeniably intriguing one and events kick off in a promisingly creepy way. Teen goth chick Lisa (Abigail Breslin) is awakened by the voice of her young brother on a walkie-talkie. She is in a house seemingly cut off from the rest of the world by an impenetrable fog bank. Her day starts with a family breakfast – brother, mother and father - all syrupy pancakes and idle chatter. Then she does the laundry in the basement whilst her father works on fixing the car in the garage. She has lunch and then she plays the clarinet in her room along to a vinyl recording of "Peter And The Wolf." She has dinner and then the family settles down to watch an episode of"Murder She Wrote" on TV.
It soon becomes apparent that the family are stuck in a loop with every day starting the same way, every event playing out the same, every meal, every activity, and each word spoken. The only difference being that Lisa has come to realise it whilst the other three family members do not. Her efforts to explain and convince them amount to little as they can't understand what she's talking about. They are obliviously living the day for the first time whilst Lisa is living it over and over again. So she starts to tamper with the trajectory of events and stuff, as they say, happens.
That's a great set-up for a chiller and it certainly got my attention. Sadly, it didn't hold or reward it for long. What follows is a tweenie-friendly ghost story centred on Edgar (Stephen McHattie) a fruit-loop serial killer offing people for decades. He is now dead himself, but that doesn't stop him. The house was the place he lived all his life and obliterated the bodies of his victims in a sub-basement furnace. His spirit possesses the father of any family unit who moves into the house and induces him to kill his loved ones and himself. Edgar has control of the spirits of all his past victims and he keeps them trapped in the house as his playthings. Lisa and her family are in fact dead as of 1985.
In the present day, Olivia (Eleanor Zichy), first mistakenly thought to be a spiritual presence, is the daughter of the family who currently occupy the house. She is trying to connect with Lisa in an effort to help save her own family from the same fate. Her daddy is starting to get a touch of the Nicholson's. She's figured it all out, see – somehow or other.
Content-wise, it's bloodless, non-violent, with no scares, no shocks, no suspense and not even the most meagre attempted stab at logical structure or a dynamic, functioning narrative form. After a tremendously promising preamble that has a cool Twilight Zone vibe, the whole thing falls flatly into a slop of utter blandness and monotony like a sugar-free blancmange dropping down a drainpipe into a vat of flavourless jello.
It's a shame as the production values, set-design and cinematography are far from shabby, and the shift between the time frames represented on screen is authentically realised and represented. There is some good audio FX work also. A decent level of thought and attention to detail has been invested in the crucial peripheral elements and the stage is immaculately set-up for something dark, moody and malevolent.
The action lacks bite and impact and the narrative quickly devolves into a cookie-cutter drone-along for the bud-eared tweenie generation. This might possibly be a bit insulting to and underestimating of the sensibilities of the target audience. What causes filmmakers to believe young adults need patronising to the extent they are constantly fed a white-food diet of TWILIGHT-style junket? Is it too much of a stretch beyond the pale to imagine they could cope with something a bit more viscerally thrilling and punchy than that? In that event perhaps the rest of us could even get something meaningful out of it into the bargain. The Daniel Radcliffe version of THE WOMAN IN BLACK, although far from perfect, does illustrate to some extent how atmospheric hackle-raising chills and suitably gruesome implications can be generated in a film that need not be an adults only preserve.
Performances are borderline competent, but bemusedly frozen-faced and inexpressive - especially the adults. It's as if they have all been under the plastic surgeons knife and subsequently administered large industrial strength shots of Botox. What gives with this? The situation isn't helped much by Breslin wearing in sympathy the same wide-eyed look of a startled doe throughout, irrespective of the scene or activity she's involved in.
What is to some extent forgivable is a film that starts out bad and gets progressively better. Or starts out bad and continues that way. Or even starts out mundane and ends up mundane. What is unforgivable is a film that starts out well then discards that initial promise and grows quickly and progressively worse. Raising expectations to simply and casually ruin them is a cardinal sin. HAUNTER is guilty of that cinematic crime. As charged.
The premise is an undeniably intriguing one and events kick off in a promisingly creepy way. Teen goth chick Lisa (Abigail Breslin) is awakened by the voice of her young brother on a walkie-talkie. She is in a house seemingly cut off from the rest of the world by an impenetrable fog bank. Her day starts with a family breakfast – brother, mother and father - all syrupy pancakes and idle chatter. Then she does the laundry in the basement whilst her father works on fixing the car in the garage. She has lunch and then she plays the clarinet in her room along to a vinyl recording of "Peter And The Wolf." She has dinner and then the family settles down to watch an episode of"Murder She Wrote" on TV.
It soon becomes apparent that the family are stuck in a loop with every day starting the same way, every event playing out the same, every meal, every activity, and each word spoken. The only difference being that Lisa has come to realise it whilst the other three family members do not. Her efforts to explain and convince them amount to little as they can't understand what she's talking about. They are obliviously living the day for the first time whilst Lisa is living it over and over again. So she starts to tamper with the trajectory of events and stuff, as they say, happens.
That's a great set-up for a chiller and it certainly got my attention. Sadly, it didn't hold or reward it for long. What follows is a tweenie-friendly ghost story centred on Edgar (Stephen McHattie) a fruit-loop serial killer offing people for decades. He is now dead himself, but that doesn't stop him. The house was the place he lived all his life and obliterated the bodies of his victims in a sub-basement furnace. His spirit possesses the father of any family unit who moves into the house and induces him to kill his loved ones and himself. Edgar has control of the spirits of all his past victims and he keeps them trapped in the house as his playthings. Lisa and her family are in fact dead as of 1985.
In the present day, Olivia (Eleanor Zichy), first mistakenly thought to be a spiritual presence, is the daughter of the family who currently occupy the house. She is trying to connect with Lisa in an effort to help save her own family from the same fate. Her daddy is starting to get a touch of the Nicholson's. She's figured it all out, see – somehow or other.
Content-wise, it's bloodless, non-violent, with no scares, no shocks, no suspense and not even the most meagre attempted stab at logical structure or a dynamic, functioning narrative form. After a tremendously promising preamble that has a cool Twilight Zone vibe, the whole thing falls flatly into a slop of utter blandness and monotony like a sugar-free blancmange dropping down a drainpipe into a vat of flavourless jello.
It's a shame as the production values, set-design and cinematography are far from shabby, and the shift between the time frames represented on screen is authentically realised and represented. There is some good audio FX work also. A decent level of thought and attention to detail has been invested in the crucial peripheral elements and the stage is immaculately set-up for something dark, moody and malevolent.
The action lacks bite and impact and the narrative quickly devolves into a cookie-cutter drone-along for the bud-eared tweenie generation. This might possibly be a bit insulting to and underestimating of the sensibilities of the target audience. What causes filmmakers to believe young adults need patronising to the extent they are constantly fed a white-food diet of TWILIGHT-style junket? Is it too much of a stretch beyond the pale to imagine they could cope with something a bit more viscerally thrilling and punchy than that? In that event perhaps the rest of us could even get something meaningful out of it into the bargain. The Daniel Radcliffe version of THE WOMAN IN BLACK, although far from perfect, does illustrate to some extent how atmospheric hackle-raising chills and suitably gruesome implications can be generated in a film that need not be an adults only preserve.
Performances are borderline competent, but bemusedly frozen-faced and inexpressive - especially the adults. It's as if they have all been under the plastic surgeons knife and subsequently administered large industrial strength shots of Botox. What gives with this? The situation isn't helped much by Breslin wearing in sympathy the same wide-eyed look of a startled doe throughout, irrespective of the scene or activity she's involved in.
What is to some extent forgivable is a film that starts out bad and gets progressively better. Or starts out bad and continues that way. Or even starts out mundane and ends up mundane. What is unforgivable is a film that starts out well then discards that initial promise and grows quickly and progressively worse. Raising expectations to simply and casually ruin them is a cardinal sin. HAUNTER is guilty of that cinematic crime. As charged.