By: Addison Wylie

With every review, I try to inject some insight as to how I felt while watching the movie.  Sometimes, I use humour and metaphors to get my point across.  Writing has allowed my voice to travel along some creative routes in order to express an opinion about the medium.  There’s no feeling quite like finding a conscious flow to your thoughts.

With Gavin Michael Booth’s The Scarehouse, I have nothing interesting to say and hardly any wisdom.  The film is mind numbing and has rendered me useless.  I’m finding so little to say about the movie because I just didn’t care about anything that happened.  I felt defeated as I slogged my way through Booth’s tangled flick.

The film was cooked up by Gavin Michael Booth and his partner, Sarah Booth, from ideas that could’ve only materialized after the two watched a few dated horror movies one Halloween.  Sarah Booth also appears as Corey Peters in the film, a vicious partner in crime.  Corey and Elaina are bitter after their time spent around ditzy sorority sisters.  They try and pledge, but the hazing grows more demeaning.  The two outsiders turn the tables and decide to conduct their own type of hazing.  The team rig up an intricate haunted house and create a personal doom for their victims.

There’s more to the story that is gradually revealed, but the Booth’s are missing key introductions in The Scarehouse.  The audience is thrown into grotesque torture while “found footage” excerpts shabbily fill us in on previous information leading up to the revenge.

Gavin and Sarah have inserted too many spaces between clues, which means the audience sits back and questions why they should have any emotional attachment to what’s going on.  We see two disgruntled sourpusses lure unsuspecting bimbos into their lair, and brutalize each one – sometimes murdering them.  The blood and gore is all very convincing and cringe-worthy, but there’s not much else to these scenes.  It’s the epitome of torture porn.

I was willing to strap in for a thrilling ride.  I appreciated the work that went into this eerie haunted house, and it’s easy to see the filmmaker embrace the demented mystery our characters are coiled up in.  But, so much blood is spilled and depicted as shallow schlock in its stern context.  The Scarehouse doesn’t utilize its tense tone well, and there’s a sense of desperation behind the film as Booth tries to discover some sort of subtext underneath it all.  Whereas, the Soska Sisters could do this type of film in their sleep with more intelligence.

The Scarehouse has a poor acting showcase as well.  The female cast is constantly shown in low-cut wardrobe and drunkenly cursing like sailors.  I’d tell you the word of choice, but I’ll wait until I see you next Tuesday to reveal.

So, this is me waving the white flag.  Tag me out.  Stick a fork in me because I’m done, movie.  I was fed up with The Scarehouse early on, and the film offered me no incentive for hanging in there.