Dark House (2009) - 2/4

So often these mid-budget horror movies have one CGI monster or one guy with freaky make-up, whether ghost, demon, witch, or banshee; and this creature leaves you so underwhelmed, you wonder, "THIS is the terror?!". Dark House doesn't come up with anything better; it just multiplies it. Instead of one CGI monster or one guy with freaky make-up, we get a whole gaggle of them. The result is, actually, effective. While one of these creations underwhelms, the extra effort exerted in creating a horde of different creatures keeps each set-piece of the film novel and allows viewers to wonder what creature will pop up next.

The premise of Dark House is, in fact, built around these creatures. A crazy amusement ride entrepreneur (Jeffrey Combs) has designed his masterpiece, "Dark House", a haunted house using a series of lasers to produce holographic horrors. Each room of the house has some new hologram to freak out customers. The few humans are a class of student actors hired to interact with the holograms and customers. The one catch is that the house used as the "Dark House" really may really be haunted and one of the actors has a hidden past with the house. Naturally, the holograms go ape and folks start dying.

This familiar plot is a generous sampling from William Castle movies. A portion of House on Haunted Hill, a lot of Thirteen Ghosts, and maybe a dash of The Tingler, and you have Dark House's backbone, a loose basis for the various murder set pieces. Castle's films are haunted house rides, designed to give lighthearted, even cheesy, thrills in isolated moments. Dark House inherits that spirit. It even inherits Vincent Price's hamminess from House on Haunted Hill, channeled here by Combs in his eccentric millionaire performance. Copying something good is better than an original bad idea: like any William Castle movie, Dark House is fun.

Unfortunately, the screenwriters get a little too ambitious and try to throw us some unnecessary twists toward the end. As is often the case, these twists are fig leaves over something screenwriters tend to find embarrassing: simplicity. A straightforward haunting or insanity story can be elevated with a twist; but more often than not, as in this case, it's simply confused. Some may enjoy the twists, however, and some may not; but the story's simplicity throughout the majority of the film allows us to enjoy the film's real meat, which is just the inventive creatures and their kills.