Quick Look: A Hanuted House (2013)

People in the Movie: Marlon Wayans, Essence Atkins

Director: Michael Tiddes

Pigeonhole: Spoof / Comedy

The Horror: A Haunted House was written by Marlon Wayans and Rick Alvarez, and is a spoof (primarily) of the found-footage horror film Paranormal Activity.  Being a horror spoof and because of Wayans’ involvement, the comparisons to Scary Movie were going to be inevitable, and unfortunately this film does not measure up to its predecessor.  

A Haunted House, like Paranormal Activity, is presented as “found footage” style with the audience seeing the bulk of the activity through the view of either a home video and/ or a mounted security-type camera.  Malcolm (Wayans) and Kisha (Atkins), a couple, have decided to move in together.  Strange things start to happen and while Kisha believes there is a ghost responsible, Malcolm initially rejects the idea.  However, as the ghost’s activity escalates, Kisha reveals she has previously made a deal with the Devil for a pair of shoes.  Soon it appears Kisha is possessed by the evil spirit, so Malcolm calls in Father Doug (Cedric the Entertainer) to perform an exorcism.  Everything appears to work out, with the ghost being exorcised, but then Kisha kills Malcolm in the last shot of the film.  Parodies of The Devil Inside and The Exorcist are also worked in, with nods to several other horror films, as well.   

It Dies: Woven through the basic plot and patchwork of the 5-6 minute “sequences” is plenty of toilet humor, racial jokes, sexual/ homosexual themes and one-liners.  Some of the moments worked, and came off as very entertaining, but where A Haunted House fails overall, in my opinion, is that it used the gags and comedy to drive the film, rather than letting the “serious” plot drive the film and then highlighting each new “scary” situation with a comedic moment or bit.  Instead, this movie comes off more like an episode of In Living Color, where anticipation for the punch-line is holding your attention more the action going on around it.  In that regard, the “spoof” is lost.    

Recommendation: You know what you are going to get with a film like this; it’s really just matter of “how funny”, overall, it is going to be.  As I noted earlier, A Haunted House has several good moments that I could say make it worth seeing.  The downside is that some of the not-so-funny bits are the ones that seem to go on the longest, or show back up in a later scene and remain unfunny.  ‘R’ rating is for language, sexual content and comical violence.