Writers: Charles Agron, Victor Salva
Director: Victor Salva
What if ghosts were real…
I try to avoid spoilers in these reviews, but when a film has a character list including Eve, Lilith, Nick and Seth it’s hardly a spoiler to say that the story has Biblical elements.
Dark House (aka Haunted) centres around 23 year old Nick (Luke Kleintank). All his life he’s been drawing pictures of a strange house. He also has the ability to touch people and see visions of their deaths. Oh, and he never knew the identity of his father – but strange forces now want him to learn the truth (you’ve guessed already, haven’t you?)
After his institutionalised mother dies, Nick inherits the deeds to a strange old house – the one he has been drawing all these years. When he goes to investigate he discovers that the house is the subject of local urban legend and now inhabited by Seth (Tobin Bell) who has spent twenty years trying unsuccessfully to destroy it. Nick slowly learns the secrets of the house and his father.
The main plot is pretty straightforward and obvious. Perhaps because of this, Agron and Salva throw in numerous other elements such as the ubiquity of the number 23. Unfortunately there are rather too many ingredients in the pot and they don’t blend well. Some come over as simply ridiculous, for example the voices in the walls that always talk to people through air vents. And when we met the over-the-top Seth I seriously wondered if the whole thing was meant to be a send up.
Direction is ok but, as with the script, it’s as if Salva hasn’t really decided what sort of movie he’s making. Slasher? Monster? Haunted House? There’s no real atmosphere or tension until the final confrontation – but that’s then let down by an ending that left me scratching my head as to who had won and how.
Dark House takes a simple idea and overcomplicates it in an unsuccessful attempt to make it interesting. The result is somewhere between uninspired and irritating.