Simply Perfect

Good movie but grossly overrated

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This movie was recommended by one of my favorite youtuber reviewers but I really really regret watching this and wish I never bothered. I got annoyed by it. the movie is not even really a movie, it feels like a reality tv documentary but with a lot of stuff missing. they go from place to place but nothing really flows or makes sense. the characters interview people and i was actually much more interesting and i was more engaged in the interviews to the people and their haunts that i was in watching the "plot" of this movieI kinda wish this was just a regular documentary on haunted houses. because at least that would have been interesting.

well, the premise is interesting – a group of friends travelling Texas and Louisiana in search of a secret haunted house experience that's supposedly more 'extreme'/scarier than any other. unfortunately the execution doesn't do the story justice the camera never stops bouncing and swiveling like the director is jerking off with it through the entire film. seriously, it's bad even for the found footage style. the first 30 minutes are primarily dull, seemingly unscripted banter between dull, undeveloped characters. i guess the lack of scripted dialogue is meant to add to the documentary-style, found footage presentation, but it doesn't really add anything to the story, and you can stretch it out only so far before it begins to look like obvious filler. edit out all the unnecessary parts of this film and shorten the scenes that drag on to the point of killing all tension, and you'd have a marginally interesting 20 - 30 minute short. i can't imagine why anyone thought it needed a sequel, or who would want to sit through it after having watched this, but i for one will be looking elsewhere for entertainment this holiday season

When I stumbled upon 'The Houses October Built' on Netflix, I was hesitant, yet intrigued by both the trailer and the poster. Not many movies give us the glimpse of haunted houses on Halloween Night, especially to the found footage extent. Within the first twenty minutes, I was utterly bored, but did not want to stop without finishing. I'm glad I didn't stop, because it got creepier by the minute. The movie does explain well what to expect in haunted houses and the scary nature of the unknown when stepping inside. However, the movie does not do a good job (as many are) of explaining what the hell happened at the end to the characters and why were they being chased after. The doll girl... CREEPY! My advice, don't go in with high expectations and you'll be quite satisfied.

Nevermind the actual film, the idea is one of the most potent I've seen in some time.A group of friends set out in a van in search of horror, haunted house attractions scattered around rural America. It's the days leading up to Halloween so we can have a pervasive atmosphere of masks and monsters roaming the streets. I like that it's a glimpse outside the usual and tied to a larger fabric of make-believe.The idea is that we'll venture into these houses where horror is supposed to be controlled around us, the work of fiction, only to discover more slippery boundaries of truth. This would touch at the very essence of horror, exploiting the same perturbations that move viewers in both the actual houses and film; see, we know it's not real, but what to do when your body tells you otherwise?So nevermind that it's actors we see and scripted reactions. Some of the most potent footage here are from within these houses where we go in with a camera and a swirl of monsters lunges at us, staged but it comes alive. I'm guessing these are actual places that partnered with the filmmakers and this is what tantalized me going in; it would be at least in part an actual tour of that America that goes to pilgrimage in actual places.They manage to bungle this for my taste, the part where fiction blurs and we go to something that comes alive in the moment of watching.For one, they chose the "found footage" mode (silly name, largely the baggage of Blairwitch - it really means "someone is filming this now"). It's the most apt choice I've seen since Last Exorcism, but no one ever films a sense of place and passing time, a physical sense of journey; they waste it on lots of blathering around a camera so that it ends up feeling like an episode of cable TV. Indicative of the actual makers holding the camera I guess.And then there's the ending. This is where the staged scenarios in these attractions don't cut it any more as the characters push for more and more "real" stuff. Lo, there's rumor of a secret place that you can only reach by invitation. But once there, it's the most obviously staged part of the film, the complete opposite of where we were meant to be viewing-wise.So this is a miss, filmmakers with maybe the strongest idea of any of their peers this year but none of the tools of insight to cultivate it. They outline enough for me to imagine it in more intuitive hands so all in all I would have this over the next paranormal film.Someone has gone out with the urge for horror in mind (and it's our very urge to inhabit illusion that made us build these houses), thinking he knows illusion from real, but it begins to spill outside, perturbing reality. From a certain point on, the apparitions become aware of someone watching, aware inside the fiction, so conspire to stage the real thing as a cosmic prank that shatters lives.Watch The Funhouse, Hooper's film driven by the same instinct, a funhouse that extends from the actual place to haunt the whole film.