Rating of
1.5/4
Not A Complete Waste, But Pretty Close
mitchellyoung - wrote on 01/31/13
The previews made this film look abysmal, but it's not quite as bad as expected. The energy and comic timing of the cast makes a few scenes work and there are one or two laugh-out-loud moments. Of course, just like the ill-fated Scary Movie trilogy, A Haunted House often goes for broad parody and low humor than smart satire of the found footage genre, which often results in pointless and tired fart and poop jokes. Its commitment to recreating its obvious source material is admirable, but the resulting plot is thin, even for a comedy, and disjointed, and, by the end, the comic energy (what little there was to start,) has completely vanished into a series of lame gags. Could have been fairly good, especially since the found footage horror film is still being run into the ground and has obvious flaws (none of which are really lampooned by this film,) but the filmmakers go for a lower form of humor and, as a result, miss the mark.
