Haunt is a throwback, slasher romp, that takes place on Halloween night (yep, Michael Myers territory) and revolves around college students who dig themselves into a nightmarish hole due to no fault of their own, unless one considers venturesome naivety a fault.
The movie, written/directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods of A Quiet Place fame and coproduced by terror maestro Eli Roth, grazes the old, haunted-house theme as filtered through a seasonal, Grand Guignol attraction. It's not House on Haunted Hill or The Haunting per se, but rather uses their backdrops within a Texas Chainsaw/10 Little Indians context, intertwined with Vincenzo Natali's Cube. To further these chilling archetypes, the gruesome hijinks are hosted by a clown, ghost, devil, witch, vampire and Leatherface-styled zombie, each represented by a nostalgic, vacuform mask.
Regardless of the movie's tried-and-true trek, Haunt nurtures a constant guessing-game menace, with the funhouse's corridors, compartments and contraptions delivering fear and carnage at every turn. (Though false scares are featured, they're sparse in comparison to the genuine horror: a refreshing approach considering the former being a beaten-to-death crutch, which never worked in the past and sure as hell doesn't work now.)
The entrapped participants are played by Katie Stevens, Will Brittain, Andrew Caldwell, Lauryn McClain, Shazi Raja and Schuyler Helford. They're all effective: likeable enough not to get on one's nerves, but not so empathetic to make a viewer shed a tear if one of them is knocked off.
So, why must these poor, young folks play victim to the inhabitants of this crazed attraction? The aggressors could be no more than disguised cultists (for one, Chaney Morrow's ghost seems a trifle too venacular to be out-of-this-world), but something spacey seems to be motivating these violent masqueraders. If they're the real, ethereal deal, that designates them to the Freddy/Jason/Pinhead category. But if they do land there, does that make the enclosed circumstances any more dangerous? As we all know, human monsters can be the most ruthless of all (in particular those who chatter like you and me). A combination of both worlds, however, would be nothing short of spinetingling surreal.
Though much of the tale is left to (mis)interpretation (and not everyone will appreciate the open-ended hows and whys), Haunt remains a steady, enjoyable hodgepodge throughout. In other words, there's never a dull moment during its claustrophobic run.
Swing in, swing out, and have lots of haunting fun in the process, courtesy of Hulu.
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