Rating: 2.5/5
Soul Man director Steve Minor gives us a story about a house… that hates. A newly separated writer moves into his old family home — the one at which his son went missing — and the house is not having it. The ghost of his aunt shows up to tell him that the house won, that it tricked her
One of those great posters/VHS covers I’d see at Blockbuster, but I would never rent it
The movie is like cartoony family-friendly horror about PTSD. He’s trying to write a book about his time in Vietnam while dealing with a haunted house, and the movie has to make it all fit together, and it doesn’t make sense
Monster/ghost effects look pretty alright — the matted painting of the house on the cliff near the end looks cool. If the movie went broader and more over-the-top with the humor or the gore or the scares, it might be something good. But it does everything so safe and by the book
Stray Thoughts
- Dali painting on the wall. The kid walks in and sees it. “Sick,” he says dismissively
- Norm! He has all the best lines
- The dude cannot wrap his mind around the ghost disappearing in the house. Every time it surprises and confuses him
- He wanted proof that the thing existed. But when he killed it, he cut it up and buried it instead
- His Vietnam flashbacks are so goofy — why would he write a book about any of them?