Fear House (2008)
Review by Gabrielle Faust
I always say that the worst state of being one can be in after watching a film is a state of apathy. By this I mean that the movie has affected the viewer in little to no way. There has been no profound sense of emotion or opinion, either positive or negative and the end result is a rating of “okay”.
Unfortunately, the indie horror movie Fear House left me with just such a residual state of apathy. It was not that I entirely disliked this film; it had quite a bit on the positive going for it. The the actors involved in the project showed great potential and worked well together on screen. The storyline itself is intriguing, but it just lacked intensity.
Fear House is the tale of a group of friends and family that go in search of a missing horror author who has holed herself up in an abandoned haunted house. The house is haunted by the the spirits of a cruel minister and his daughter and slave, whom he murdered. Once they enter the house, the spirits refuse to let them leave and start killing them by means of their own worst fears.
Though the initial set up and build of the film showed incredible promise, the movie simply fell flat. Every time a scene began to increase with suspense and expectation of something horrible happening to one of the characters, somehow it would lose momentum and fizzle. It was almost as if director Michael R. Morris was struggling to find a balance between a gory slasher-esque film and a more subtle psychological approach to horror and, in the process, his vision was muddled a bit in the gray area lurking in the middle. In essence, the film simply didn’t prove to terrify or horrify me in a way I prefer horror films to do.
Terror-factor asides, which with a name like Fear House one would expect to be intense and gratifying, I still enjoyed the film. For a low budget film, I liked the good utilization of the limited settings; the film’s creators worked within their scope and did not try to make the film larger than the budget allowed, focusing on the development of character interaction and the power of “the unseen and unknown”. I was particularly impressed with the performance of actress Aleece Jones who plays the part of the delusional writer. Jone’s portrayal of a woman pushed to the breaking point of her sanity after weeks of being tortured by vengeful spirits is actually quite startling and shows her future promise as an actress.
As for the speed of the plot development, the Fear House does not waste any time by cutting directly to the heart of the story; the history behind the house is worked into the film throughout the timeline and, thus, the pace is fairly quick, at least in the beginning. Again, because of the overall tameness of the terror-factor the film feels as if it looses momentum about half way through, but redeems itself in the end with a clever resolution.
Overall, I would consider Fear House a successful indie horror venture. However, if you are looking for a flick that will make you curl up in your seat like a child and sleep with the lights on, I’m afraid that Fear House simply isn’t it.
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