The Houses October Built (2014) Review

Starring: Brandy Schaefer, Zack Andrews, Bobby Roe, Mikey Roe, Jeff Larson, Chloë Crampton, Ian Roberts

Director: Bobby Roe

Writer: Zack Andrews, Bobby Roe, Jason Zada

Running time: 94 minutes

Rated: None (for language, nudity, terror, violence)

Reviewed by Michael Juvinall

The Houses October Built is IN THEATERS, VOD AND iTUNES: October 10, 2014 from RLJ/Image Entertainment.

You gotta love Halloween time. It’s a time when all the haunted attractions vie for your hard earned dollars. Everybody loves going to haunted houses, that’s why each October, 30 million people visit haunted attractions. You might not realize this but the haunt industry generates almost $500 million dollars each year in ticket sales, and that’s only the United States. It is estimated there are over 1200 haunted attractions in the U.S. and if you count amusement parks offering a haunted attraction, then you can add another 300 to those numbers. People like to be scared and are willing to pay top dollar for a good attraction. But as each year goes by, haunted house fans look for bigger and better scares. Every Halloween we see more extreme haunts open up. These are haunts that offer more intense scares than your average haunted house patron can handle.

But what if there were underground haunted houses, haunts that had no rules, no insurance, and no limits. Would you actively search for one of these to get the ultimate scare if there were such things? How far would you go to seek out that ultimate haunted house?

In The Houses October Built, we meet up with five friends led by Bobby Roe, playing himself and Zack Andrews, also playing himself, as they talk three of their buddies Brandy Schaefer, Mikey Roe, and Jeff Larson into renting an RV and searching the South West for the most intense haunt they can find.

Six days before Halloween, the group heads out in search of rumored underground haunts. The haunts that Bobby is looking for are so underground that they are extremely difficult to find. After traveling to several haunted houses in the South, the group slowly gains information about a rumored haunt that’s so intense it has almost become an urban legend. Slowly, strange things begin to happen to the group leading them to believe the ultimate haunted house is not a legend after all. When the group thinks they’ve hit a dead end, they discover that their search is over…it has found them!

The Houses October Built is another POV filmed narrative (found footage). It actually makes sense due to the fact the group are trying to document their search for the ultimate extreme haunted house. The movie almost feels like a documentary since all the main characters are playing themselves. It adds a level of creepiness that permeates throughout the film.

All of the main leads are believable in their roles and act accordingly to what happens on screen. I would have to say, the real standout is Brandy Schaefer as the typical woman in peril who with her performance, makes her character rise above the cardboard cutout heroine.

The film has some legitimate frights and might make you think twice about visiting an unpolished haunted attraction away from a brightly lit urban environment. Almost every haunted house I’ve ever been to in the last several years features some variation of the scary clown character. I don’t really get it because I don’t find clowns scary no matter how frightening they’re made up to be. This film features some damn creepy clown villains that may haunt your nightmares. This film is not of the supernatural variety and is played more for realism, making it all the more frightening.

While some of the scenarios played out in the film may not be plausible in real life, it still makes for a pretty good film. It may not become a seminal Halloween classic like Trick ‘r Treat or John Carpenter’s classic, but I feel as some years pass, it will become a film that many people pull out to watch during the Halloween season again and again.

3 ½ out of 5 Pentagrams!

Watch the trailer for The Houses October Built here,