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Review: Haunt

A Quiet Place came out of nowhere and surprised many with its scary, intense and thrilling horror tale of a family trapped by monsters that hunted using sound. Yes. director John Kransinski nailed the material, but a screenplay is the bones of any movie, and writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods crafted a great one.

So it's with much anticipation that I went into the new Halloween-themed horror flick Haunt, which Beck and Woods not only wrote, but directed. And they did not disappoint.

Haunt plays like the bastard child of Saw and Hostel at Halloween time. A group of friends enter a Halloween haunt and discover the scares aren't make believe. Yes, things get pretty nasty.

I've never been much for movies that rely on torture for scares. Fortunately for Haunt, this isn't a movie where people are being tortured. Each haunted-house gag is put to gruesome use as victims are picked off one by one. And Beck and Woods know how to stage a scene and a scare. This movie gets tense quick, and doesn't slow down for a moment. I appreciated that.

In fact, this is a fun ride with more than a few cringe-worthy moments. The characters are pretty thin, and I didn't mind most of them dying, but let's be honest -- that's what we're here for. So it works.

As with the best genre movies, the villains' motivation is left for us to determine, and they're a great group of bad guys. It's almost too bad Beck and Woods deliver a very cool late-movie twist, or we could have had more Haunts in the future. Spoiler alert.

Anyway, I'm giving this one a Good. It was a great way to kick off my Halloween-viewing season.
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