A Haunted House (2013)
Directed by: Michel Tiddes
Written by: Marlon Wayans, Rick Alvarez
Starring: Affion Crocket, Cedric the Entertainer, David Koechner, Essence Atkins, Marlon Wayans, Nick Swardson
Film:
A Haunted House
DIRECTOR
Michel Tiddes
CAST
Marlon Wayans, Essence Atkins, Cedric the Entertainer, Nick Swardson, David Koechner, Affion Crocket
RATING
15
Out Now In Selected Cinema’s
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA2Z-ZVMGsc[/youtube]
The Hughes Verdict
And award for worst horror comedy of the year goes too………….
The only thing I can say about A Haunted House is the fact that its better than Paranormal Activity 4, which you can imagine is not hard as the third sequel is possibly one of the worst horror films of recent times.
Marlon Wayans who seems to be trying his best to become the new Mel Brook’s, moves away from the horror that was Dance Flick and into the realms of Found Footage piss take and while you have to admire his ambition, A Haunted House is a dire 89 minutes waste of anybody’s time, despite a few sparkles of wit that suggests that if Wayans stayed away from the smut, this could have been one heck of a parody.
A Haunted House is all but set in the world of Paranormal Activity. The house looks the same, the bedroom, even the camera setup! What we have is Malcolm (Wayans) letting his long term girlfriend Kisha (Essence Atkins) move in with him, and the reason for the camera? Well, Malcolm wants a bit of night time camera sex!
The film starts off with a cracking gag involving a car and a poor cute dog that made me feel for a brief moment that this could be something special, but sadly it goes down rapidly from there and all we have is a movie that is more focused on poor sex gags than actually trying to be funny and for a film that has a small running time, it sure does drag on like you won’t believe .
Things go downhill before even the first night is over with. Malcolm sets up the camera in hope to get lucky and as Kisha gets ready in the bathroom, Malcolm decides to test out what he is going to do to his girlfriend by acting it out on his teddy bear. What starts off as witty, goes on and on and on and on….its like The Lover’s Guide meets TED and for me I doubt very much if I see a worst scene in a movie in 2013.
The problem with A Haunted House is the fact it does not know when less is best. The forever scene of Kisha breaking wind in bed, starts you off with a giggle but again drags on and on….. and when its not displaying the same joke, they then decide to venture down the path of vulgar which borders on offensive.
Not only does the film go down the route of The Entity with poor Kisha being the subject of “ghost rape”, we then have to witness Malcolm getting the same treatment which begs the question ” What kind of people find Anal Rape funny?”
The biggest shame is that underneath the crap fest, there are some genuine moments that stand out! The scene where the couple are trying to have breakfast while the ghost is playing havoc is a real good set piece that deserves to be in a better movie and despite everything, Wayans gives a good show, playing it straight when the chaos unfolds.
While not as horrid as the dire Scary Movie parts 4 and 5, spoofs live or die by their gags and this is where A Haunted House fails miserably. The actors are game for everything and there are some good cameo’s from the likes of David Koechner, sadly though while the genre was ripe for a good old piss take of the highest order, this is not the movie that offered it and the biggest joke of them all when the credits start to roll at the end is……
There is a sequel coming!…………….
Rating: 
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