A family of five moves into a beautiful, sprawling dream home. One problem: it';s cursed, having caused the deaths of the previous family to occupy it, leaving only one survivor. The moody 18-year-old son befriends his new neighbor, and together the couple begin to explore the haunted house that his family has just purchased.
There's lots of mixed film stock and screeches on the soundtrack (as in the credits for "Seven"), but this gets annoying, as do the predictable twists.
While it may not necessarily give horror fans a case of the heebie jeebies any time soon, it's just nice to see a moderate supernatural thriller actually put forth some effort and not just give us another paint-by-numbers spookfest
By the time the final act unleashes its revelations and peril, "Haunt" has felt more like an exercise in formal spookiness than a full-blooded story of lingering malevolence.
The frustration here comes from the filmmakers' inability to present characters with dimension, so that we might come to identify with them and their fears.
Making a virtue of unoriginality, this clammy little ghost story, confidently directed by Mac Carter, conjures a whole heap of atmosphere from little more than clever camera angles and bedsheet apparitions.
