Pretty Good Haunted House Flick Till the Very End
Jonathan Blazer (Paul Fannery) and Jack Donavan (Michael Koltes) are two paranormal researchers who are summoned to a British manor where mysterious murders have been supposedly occurring over the last 200 years. The estate's unnamed owner has invited them to stay there for 72 hours to dispel any rumors that the place in haunted. The bargain is after three days of being locked inside they must come out and tell the public there is absolutely nothing supernatural happening in the ancient building and get paid $50,000 each. Jonathan is a psychic and believer in the occult while Jack completely believes in science only and is constantly trying to disprove anything unnatural. The reason for Jack's strong feelings about this is because his late wife was an actual medium who dabbled in witchcraft. One day she committed suicide after messing around with it and since then, Jack has wanted to prove magic and the supernatural weren't real. He wanted to believe it was all in her head. Flash forward to Jack and Jonathan's stay in the house and they immediately begin seeing tangible ghosts of people previously murdered there. They are able to use a shotgun on one ghost woman, disabling it. Another one (who's like a fat hobo with a beard, oblivious to the large hole the buckshot left in its chest after being shot) continues to slowly chase after Jack. Upstairs Jonathan encounters a ghostly teenage girl who manages to stab him in the foot and then the leg. He manages to throw salt in her face, temporarily blinding her, then stabs her through the top of the skull with the same knife she stabbed him with. For some reason that "kills" the ghost girl. Meanwhile Jack loses the hobo ghost somehow and comes into a room to meet a zombie-like ghost of his dead wife. She gives him a guilt trip about her death and then begins stabbing herself trying to drive Jack mental. He pulls out a rosary with a crucifix and manages to drive her away. Jack then joins Jonathan where he has poured a salt circle in the attic. There they plan to drive the demon that has caused all the chaos in this home for last two dozen decades back to its to wherever it originally came. Jonathan warns Jack not to look at before they begin. They succeed in summoning the demon before casting it out... Now here's why I don't rank this movie any higher... After the purging Jonathan remarks "My, that was almost too easy!". Turns out it was. Jack has stared at the demon and became possessed. While Jack is attempting to strangle him, Jonathan shreds a tear and stabs Jack. The next scene shows Jonathan coming out the unlocked front doors with the shotgun. It's been three days. For some inexplicable reason the movie directors have a guy in a shabby, rubbery demon costume come up behind Jonathan and say, "Skipping out so early?". Then Jonathan flips the shotgun over his shoulder (right beside his ear) and fires. The End. Yeah I didn't care for the last 5 minutes of what had been a pretty entertaining haunted house flick.score 5/10
knightox 29 October 2019
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5221186/35892
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