How About Some Haunted House Films to Close Out the Old Year?
The haunted house import from Japan centers on a possessed residence that literally gobbles up its doomed visitors. A group of school girls unwittingly enter a haunted house of horrors. Demonic possession, reanimated body parts out for blood, and downright bonkers fun house effects ensue. Fun fact: studio execs in Japan originally planned to produce a movie like JAWS. Yet when director and producer Nobuhiko Obayashi discussed the pitch with his young daughter, she revealed her own childhood fears — which were far more [image error]twisted and inventive than a rehashed shark movie. Thus, HAUSU was born.
Thus quoting from number 3 of “11 Scariest Haunted House Movies to Freak You Out in Your Own Home” by Jessica Ferri, courtesy of THE-LINE-UP.COM, and reason enough to check out the whole list by pressing here. Yes, there are “the usual suspects,” PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, but other good films are on the list too, like the Spanish film THE ORPHANAGE and THE OTHERS. One caveat, though, the links under each listing inviting you to WATCH IT NOW aren’t links to the movies or even to trailers, but rather to Amazon’s rental site. But you can always go from there to their actual movie site and get an idea of what prices are if you want to buy the DVD.
Also, re. HAUSU, I highly recommend it, but do realize it’s a little . . . different. Or to quote myself (cf. below, October 31 2015 — yes, I posted a review when the IU Cinema screened it for Halloween three years back), [i]t’s an “evil house” movie, but with a big difference. This one combines the expected tropes with a weird undercurrent of surrealism, including cartoons, a demon cat, telegraphed punches — all clearly intentional — even slapstick humor in a tale of seven schoolgirls’ summer outing at the home of one of the girls’ maiden aunt. An aunt she hadn’t seen since her grandmother’s funeral years in the past. And in my opinion, HAUSU alone is an excellent film to ring in the new year, a year perhaps destined to be marked with its own surrealism.
