Wednesday 13 July 2011

Return to House of Pants

Now, I enjoyed the House on Haunted Hill remake. (It was actually worth watching, unlike the other Haunting related movie that came out at the same time.) So when I found out there was a sequel, I wanted to check that out. However, since it was direct to video, my expectations weren't high...

...and I should have lowered them.

A group of people return to the House, in order to... get a statue of Baphomet. Seriously. That's the explanation they give for why the House is screwed up. Really? So, in order to get the statue, two groups of archeologists enter the house, one group with (really) mercenaries. Guess the world of archeology is really cut throat. And there may have been some whining from other characters for other reasons, but once you've got mercenary archeologists, who cares? And when one character manages to escape, she goes back in, based on a relationship formed in five minutes. Er, no.

Although it takes a while to get into the House. Half the movie is build up before the House really takes off with being eerie. (Some minor characters are killed, but they're minor, so meh.) One interesting aspect is that victims experience what happened back in the day when it was a mental hospital before dying, but the deaths themselves are stupid. And there's a big plot hole about why the ghosts are attacking and yet helping... huh?

The stars of this movie are Amanda Righetti, before she was in The Mentalist. And Andrew Lee Potts, before he was in Primeval. And Steven Pacey, long after he was in Blake's 7. So, basically, no-one when their career was worth noting.

This should have been better, but the need to give an explanation in horror sequels kills it.

[END]

2 comments:

evildicemonkey said...

This is one film I am interested in seeing, the original had some interesting characters in it and the basic real/fake haunted house type plot is entertaining enough.

However the real reason I am interested in seeing this is that it has CYOA tech on the DVD, allowing for the viewer to change the movie in some ways (I haven't looked to see what/how large the changes are), was this feature well implimented in your version?

Jamas Enright said...

One of the Final Destination DVDs also had that concept. Watching the entire movie(*) again for a five minute scene difference? Not interested...

(*)Odd, my browser is thinking this is a misspelt word...