I’ll always love a good haunted house story, I’m bound to enjoy even the most basic of plot-lines if they’re intertwined with a supernatural element terrorizing a family, thankfully for this it manages to not only do good with the latter but delivers a pretty new (to me at least) ghost story concept, one that made for a very entertaining time. The script isn’t anything special like I expected, for the most part it does the bare minimum in terms of the dialogue but that can work when you have as talented a cast as you do here. Obviously the name that sticks out the most is Bette Davis, she’s the biggest reason why I threw this on and she was as amazing as I hoped, she really nailed the grandmother role to a tee and my only problem with her was that she wasn’t in it enough. Even with that she’s not my favorite here, and it’s not the renowned Oliver Reed either although I did enjoy him, it’s Karen Black in her lead as Marian. She was great the whole way through and she really turned it up in those final 30-40 minutes. The house itself looks like every other horror country house I’ve ever seen (like if you told me this was the house from X I’d believe you) and a good portion of it looks like your stereotypical haunted house movie, and I know it doesn’t sound like it but that’s honestly a compliment, with this great concept and set of performers that simple setting was all this needed. I’m glad this turned out to be as fun as it looked and I’ll definitely be revisiting this in a spooky season down the line, a fun movie that checks off all the boxes for a solid horror.
I’ll always love a good haunted house story, I’m bound to enjoy even the most basic of plot-lines if they’re intertwined with a supernatural element terrorizing a family, thankfully for this it manages to not only do good with the latter but delivers a pretty new (to me at least) ghost story concept, one that made for a very entertaining time. The script isn’t anything special like I expected, for the most part it does the bare minimum in terms of the dialogue but that can work when you have as talented a cast as you do here. Obviously the name that sticks out the most is Bette Davis, she’s the biggest reason why I threw this on and she was as amazing as I hoped, she really nailed the grandmother role to a tee and my only problem with her was that she wasn’t in it enough. Even with that she’s not my favorite here, and it’s not the renowned Oliver Reed either although I did enjoy him, it’s Karen Black in her lead as Marian. She was great the whole way through and she really turned it up in those final 30-40 minutes. The house itself looks like every other horror country house I’ve ever seen (like if you told me this was the house from X I’d believe you) and a good portion of it looks like your stereotypical haunted house movie, and I know it doesn’t sound like it but that’s honestly a compliment, with this great concept and set of performers that simple setting was all this needed. I’m glad this turned out to be as fun as it looked and I’ll definitely be revisiting this in a spooky season down the line, a fun movie that checks off all the boxes for a solid horror.
