Haunt If You Want

I heard about Haunt (2019) on Illeana Douglas’ podcast. She was interviewing Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who wrote the script for A Quiet Place. They barely mention that they have directed a movie about an “extreme” haunted house attraction. So I queued it up.

It’s Halloween. College student Katie Stevens has an abusive boyfriend, who is ignoring her texts and (possibly) throwing pumpkins at her house. Her housemate, Lauryn McClaine, convinces her to go out for drinks with two other friends. There, she meets fellow student Will Brittain and his obnoxious pal. Said pal convinces them to all drive out to a haunted house he found a flyer for.

Before they leave, Stevens sees a mysterious figure in a red hooded robe (matching her red hoodie?), and tell Brittain that she lived in a haunted house - haunted by her alcoholic abusive father. Which explains some of her brokenness.

They find the haunted house deep in the woods, in some kind of abandoned industrial building. The masked clown at the door demands that they sign waivers and put their cellphones in a lockbox. Then they head in. The first scare is behind chain link fencing. A masked man is torturing and killing a woman with a hot poker. The lights go out and they disappear. Boy, this sure is realistic.

The group separates at a sign pointing “Safe” in one direction, “Not Safe” in the other. They are still yucking it up, although they are getting uneasy. One group comes to three coffins propped up along the wall. They realize that a door in the back of the coffin will open if they get in and close the lid. I think I would have backed out here, but I might not have made it this far.

Even after a number of very bad experiences (but no kills yet), they still have hope that this is just a very extreme (and maybe inadvertently dangerous) amusement. Some of them meet an masked figure who says his name is Mitch and he’ll lead them out to where the rest of the group is probably waiting. Just go a little further in...

It doesn’t take too long to get to the real bloody kills. Stevens gets very freaked out - she didn’t want to come anyway. But she also has the strength to survive, and even give a little back. Also, her drunken boyfriend has tracked her phone, and is coming - to the rescue? Honestly, I thought he was behind the whole thing.

I’ll just go ahead and semi-spoil the ending: it all works out, except for the kids who got killed.

This is pretty much a slasher film. The bad guys are just demented villains, with no plan or reason. The kills are extreme and gory. But it was also pretty well done - the maze-like space, the “Is it real or is it Memorex” effect in the first half, and the way they wrapped it up. It wasn’t exactly funny, but clever. I guess Beck and Woods are pretty good at this.

In conclusion, they use a nail-through-the-foot trauma that they used in A Quiet Place too. That’s because they wrote the two scripts at the same time and figured they’d sell one at most, and nobody would notice.