Oddly Captivating Haunted House Horror

Haunt Season is a strange film. It’s not the low-budget slasher B-movie that you can easily write off with its shallow characters and overreliance on fake blood. It’s something smarter, and, ultimately, more soulful than that. A tale of a serial killer descending upon the cast of a haunted house attraction, with each unsuspecting victim being picked off one by one in gory fashion, doesn’t exactly sound like an original idea or one that can be executed that cleverly.

However, Jake Jarvi’s film is an amalgamation of many moving parts. And while not all of them fit together to form one large picture, some sections have their merits and deserve recognition for the attempt, at least. This won’t be a crowd-pleaser for Halloween sleepovers nor will it be an endurance test for those who only want to creep themselves out at this time of the year. In fact, it may take an avid horror fan to appreciate Haunt Season to its fullest. It takes knowing the genre well to look past all the obvious pitfalls that less seasoned viewers would hone in on and see that something fresh is being done here — it just doesn’t have that much to do with scaring its audience.

What Is ‘Haunt Season’ About?

Haunt Season is really a slice-of-life movie. We get the customary opening kill that sets the events in place. What it really should be doing is establishing the stakes, but the first scene is over so quickly it’s hard to get any real sense of terror from it. The movie kicks into gear when it starts focusing on the main character, Matilda (Sarah Elizabeth). She’s a recent drama school graduate with no real direction in her career. Desperate for cash, she steps into the role of the screaming girl in lingerie who gets scalped by Danny (Adam Hinkle), one of the house’s longest-running members and best friend of Bradford (Stephen Kristof), the haunt’s leader. This is the role usually held by Taylor (Ana Dragovich), who the entire team thinks has just gone AWOL and bailed.

On Matilda’s first night, the killer descends on the house again, slashing one of the cast right before it opens. You would expect a paint-by-numbers formula from there: the entire team starts to realize that they’re being hunted, more people die, and there’s a climactic ending in the haunt where the final girl takes him down. But Haunt Season doesn’t give it up that easy. The kill, chase, and gore scenes are all incredibly rushed as if the filmmaker wanted to get it over and done with before moving on to the real meat of the film. Oddly, the film takes its time when following the characters when they’re removed from danger, and it’s as if Haunt Season doesn’t want to be a horror movie.

The cast of Haunt Season solidifies it as an enjoyable watch. Each character is charming in a way that completely disarms you because you know one of them has to be a killer. Sarah Elizabeth makes Matilda immediately likable, channeling Kristen Stewart with her awkward but charming and laid-back personality. Her anxiety over post-college life and fear of failing as an actor makes her an instantly empathetic character who we can resonate with. Her bond with the other women working at the haunt feels authentic, and it’s their burgeoning connection that makes you root against the killer. She also has one hell of a scream.

There’s an interesting idea to Haunt Season. If it wasn’t so bogged down by its commitment to being a run-of-the-mill slasher horror, it could have been something really new and fresh. A Kelly Reichardt–style lyrical look at the monotonous life of those who love to dress up and scare the hell out of people. The film is at its strongest when it settles on characters having the most ordinary of conversations with fake blood and Frankenstein makeup on their faces. A sequence of a party after the haunt shows Mike Leigh-adjacent conversations about the penis as a weapon and the betrayal of college friends who take the path you’re too scared to. However, it’s trying to be a slasher movie so we ultimately have to judge it by those standards. And as a slasher, with its thin plot and flat killer, Haunt Season doesn’t cut it.

Haunt Season releases in select theaters on October 4 and on VOD on October 8. Click below for showtimes.

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