Nick Di Santo (Kleintank) has the ability to touch someone and see how they are going to die. Having struggled with this gift his whole life he visits his institutionalized mother (Lesley-Anne Down) on his 23rd birthday, who informs him that the father he never knew may still be alive. Nick has seen an old mansion in his dreams his entire life, and with his friend Ryan (Perez) and girlfriend Eve (Mckenna) they set out to find the house which he now holds the deed to. It was washed away in a flood years ago but still remains sitting in the middle of a desolate field. Once there he meets a scary man named Seth (Bell) who warns him to leave. Spirits appear in the woods and chase our crew with axes and weird behavior only for the group to eventually end up back at the house. Everything isn't what it seems and through a series of twists, Nick himself is something entirely different than what we think he is. Once Charles Agron's story begins to reveal itself to the audience this movie slips seriously from an interesting, and at times scary horror film into a series of confounding explanations that will probably leave most people shaking their heads. Director Victor Salva of "Clownhouse" and both "Jeepers Creepers" movies knows how to deliver solid scares and he has added a few to this movie. These moments happen early on, but the second half of the story admittedly goes for an epic storyline and Salva quite frankly just doesn't deliver it. Once this happens in the story, the movie simply stops being fun and the wonderment that the filmmakers obviously thought we were going to be experiencing falls flat. There are a few cute ties ins to the "Jeepers Creepers" franchise including the 23 year bit being carried over to Nick's 23rd birthday here. The movie is certainly watchable and manages some nice moments in its first half, but the story just crumbles and doesn't work once it really kicks in.
Review of Haunted
Haunted
(IV) (2014)
Too much talent involved for the second half to fall apart.
5 August 2015
Warning: Spoilers