The film opens at the end. I imagine to whet your appetite and rev you up for the movie, but for me it just robbed a bit of the mystery out of the experience.
Flash forward to introduce us to a group of pals from Ohio setting out on their road trip around the American South's scariest and most extreme Haunted House attractions. They plan to film their experience as a documentary and uncover the darker side of the 'harmless' fun of thrill-seeking.
They start out with the more mainstream Haunts, introducing us to the characters and letting us see some of the attractions. But their ultimate goal is to find a legendary and exclusive extreme haunt called "Blue Skeleton", which is said to utilise actual torture techniques for a more realistic experience.
Throughout their journey they encounter natural resistance from Haunt staff to divulge their trade secrets or oust their employers' more sinister tricks. They're chased, threatened and thrown out a fair few times. Additionally, they get to hear some more disturbing tales from less coy staff.
Finally, they catch wind of the elusive Blue Skeleton and, with some difficulty, are able to gain entry to the Haunt. However, once inside, will they live to tell the tale?
A directional debut from Roe who also plays one of the main characters, he has brought together a cast which interacts fairly well on screen. However, the film suffers from a bit of a lack of strong pacing and a few conflicts of style. The characters start out making a documentary, but this theme doesn't seem to continue much throughout the film and it winds up just a stream of clips. I get it, they haven't edited it yet (and maybe won't ever get around to it) but you'd think they would have filmed a few more documentary-style scenes and interviews than are shown.
The film premise is pretty good with plenty of footage of the haunts themselves, but there's very little action throughout most of the movie and then, when stuff does start to pick up, it's over really quickly without any explanation and not enough mystique to make it a satisfying mystery. The movie ends with the only explanation being "*shrug* just 'cause".
I'm not a huge found footage fan, and when I do find a FF film that I like, it invariably has some wraparound or a few scenes of traditional filming to bolster out the shaky cam (see my thoughts on 2016's "Hell House LLC"). One of my main issues with "The Houses October Built" was that its reliance solely on 'unedited' found footage reels, made it noisy and disjointed to watch. And it's never really explained how we're watching it. Have the Blue Skeleton staff sold the videos on? Are we watching it over their shoulder/through their eyes? Was this even the Blue Skeleton?
Although, for a debut it's a fairly solid Found Footage entry and, if you like haunted houses, there's a few good scenes.
[Image: Foreboding Films, et al]
Hani
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