The Houses October Built

 **½

Here’s the thing about The Houses October Built: it gives away the horror before the whole shebang gets started. When you see a damaged beauty tossed in a trunk with a camera recording her awakening from unconsciousness, the gig is up before the buildup can even start. So we immediately know that whatever happens to the gaggle of RV-traveling friends isn’t going to end well. The whole premise builds on the embracing of, demand and desire for danger…something “extreme”. You can just hear, “Be careful what you wish for” rolling around in your mind as this found footage effort (sort of a document of the six days to Halloween, interviewed subjects who work at and are customers of scare houses, as friends who grew up together take a trip to various haunts across Texas and eventually into Nawlins) unfolds. That’s not to say I didn’t like it. I found it quite creepy (when our group finally encounter what they are looking for, they get more than they bargained for, including a creep boarding their RV, quietly recording them while they sleep, and eventually airing the footage online), relevant (the idea that some might push the boundaries of how far you’ll go to frighten or horrify an audience that attends your venue isn’t all that unrealistic), natural (camera recordings of the inside crazy shenanigans of lo-fi, rural, backwoods, built-from-scratch, off-the-beaten-path funhouses seem positively genuine, right down to the reactions of those we are following being freaked out by those trying to terrify them), and intense (when the nutcases unleash the terror on the group, they truly do encounter an “extreme haunt”, this time recorded by those inflicting the horror on them; the irony is that for most of the running time, it has been a document on others but as the film ends, they are the ones being documented).

So I think this will be worth your time. Those in the group are just a fun-loving bunch who got in over their heads and tempting fate when there are signs that danger was close and near simply wasn’t wise. When you realize that there was someone in your RV recording you, and that they left a cut out heart in your refrigerator, it might be wise to cut in run. You visited some haunts, got a few laughs, were shaken a bit, and remained alive. But that wouldn’t follow the found footage formula which often requires the bleak conclusion. The cautionary side of pursuing something extreme instead of just visiting some rather harmless (except to tremor you out of your complacency a bit) places that want to rock your nerves and make you scream. The buildup, after the opening pretty much sums up what will happen to the principles in the cast, features snippets of interviews with those in “disguise” talking candidly about their seasonal profession during Halloween time. That glimmer in their face and eyes, the cheery thrill in their voice, and just the general method with how they talk about the funhouse scare (and how far one could and should go to achieve it or of going as far as necessary to the extreme haunt) is all an approach to reveal that there are those who would go too far. That actually hurting and killing someone to achieve total fear and horror is possible in certain people. The group in this found footage film get what they seek after…and pay a price for it.

Memorable scenes include a weird girl in a warped doll mask boarding the RV and screeching after twisting her face towards them, with darkness in her eyes, a crazy in clown costume confronting the group about supposedly recording illegally in his funhouse, actual trips through funhouses including one truly disturbing haunt with lots of horror setpieces, a visit to a “horror-themed strip club”, and the assault on the RV once the group make it to their extreme haunt destination. The finale has a feeling of The Strangers in that the silent group of “haunters” besieges the innocents and quietly terrorize them. The vocals come directly from the group tormented not by those wanting to do them in.