4/5 Fear House
  by Matt Byrnes
The holy grail of low budget movies; one location, 5 (or so) cast members, and mysterious, gruesome murders.

It's an interesting premise. A group of people find themselves trapped in a house they can't escape from and one by one, each gets confronted by and then dies by their worst fear.

The pacing picks up in the second and third acts as the victims try and figure out what is the nature of the cursed house they are trapped inside of and how to escape with their lives.

The usual slasher flick morality message (ie. any teenagers that have sex will be killed) is skipped over and a much harder target it shot for. Instead, the victims are confronted by a past they are trying to escape from before being served up their just desserts. In one case, the negligent woman who let her sister drown gets decapitated, and in another, the self-involved and greedy agent gets smothered. We get to enjoy the guilty pleasure of their demise.

For those that enjoy campy horror, there is plenty of that, too. A severed head, sliced fingers and so on.

The psychological nature of this film combined with the low budget makes for a harder target, a narrower bullseye. While there are a few misses, there are enough hits to warrant a viewing by fans of the horror genre.


5/5 FEAR HOUSE- A Great Director Is Born
  by Gerald Bernardini (Claremont, New Hampshire)
Relatives and colleagues of reclusive writer Samantha Ballard track her to an isolated home in the California desert where they discover her some nine months later severely traumatized. She greets them with a grim announcement that they will die if they attempt to leave the house.
After Samantha's ex-husband and his girlfriend suffer horrible deaths while trying to escape, the others realize that she was serious. They begin to scheme a safe way out even as the malevolent force that rules the house stirs the worst fears of each of them, causing them to wonder: Can they escape the evil house before their fears kill them all?
When I viewed "Fear House", I got the same feeling as when I viewed the film "Phantasm" in 1979, that the horror genre may have a new talented director. Of course Don Cosscarelli went on to have a good cult following of his films (Phantasm 5 is in production) and I feel director Michael Morris may have a better future ahead of him.
"Fear House" doesn't rely on over-the-top gore and blood special effects, but the psychological fear of what really scares us deep inside. While trapped in the house, each person meets their deepest fears head on and it's up to them on how to handle it as to whether they will survive or not. This film is part Phantasm, part Evil Dead and part Black Christmas (the original). It's not what you see that terrorizes you, but your own sub-conscience is your enemy.
This is one of the most original and best films I've seen in quite some time.
Tony Bernardini, Horror Theater Video


3/5 not worth your time, or anyone elses time
  by B. E Jackson (Pennsylvania)
I feel like I'm being extra polite giving Fear House a 3 out of 5, but what the heck, I'm in a generous mood tonight. Oh, and a side note- I didn't mean to give the movie 5 stars on amazon, so if you see 5 out of 5, I meant 3 out of 5.

Storyline- very predictable and about as UNfrightening as you can imagine, but I'll share what it is with you anyway-

A bunch of young people are trapped inside a house of death. If anyone tries leaving the home, they die outside the house somewhere. That's it.

The actual killings that take place involving the young men and women are really, really bad. A woman tries to leave the house, an animal attacks her in her car, and the next scene shows blood all over her face as she slides down the car window and dies. Not good.

Another guy gets electrocuted, and the scene that shows the actual exectrocution is absolutely laughable.

Another one of the characters bleeds easily, so he has to be extra careful he doesn't cut himself too often. His acting skills are probably better under different circumstances (hint- a better storyline).

A little ghost child appears in front of the people later on, and she's responsible for the only actual scaring you can expect throughout the movie.

Oh, and talk about storyline inconsistency- in one scene the floor carpet catches on fire, but later on when the people were *trying* to burn the house down, they couldn't light a fire to save their lives.

The movie does have some atmosphere in a few spots though, so the movie gets a little bit of credit for that. Still, this is typical generic writing and horror storytelling. Don't bother.



1/5 Fear dying of ennui.
  by Robert P. Beveridge (Cleveland, OH)
Fear House (Matthew Miller, 2008)

When an early scene in your movie has three different people starting to try and talk a person out of shock with "Hey Samantha, it's me", it should tip you off that someone didn't pay quite as much attention to the script as they should have. Sometimes it's an oversight, but in the case of Fear House, it's simply a sign of what you're in for with this intensely stupid, boring piece of tripe. "Did you think I picked this house on accident?" Oh, for the love of pete. (And why do we call bad things tripe? Why not, say, sweetbreads?)

Plot: reclusive writer (Aleece Jones) buys old house (after an opening scene that tells you this is a really bad idea, but has no other connection to the script at all), then disappears for nine months. A number of people all descend on the house at the same time (coincidentally!) to find her: her brother (Matthew Stiller), her agent and his assistant (Matthew Montgomery and Elizabeth Price), a woman whose father supposedly disappeared in the house some time ago (Meredith Barnett), and the writer's estranged husband and his new girlfriend (Ryan Caldwell and Kiersten Hall). When they all get there, the writer explains to them (in a somewhat hysterical manner, of course) that they cannot leave the house; whatever their greatest fear is will kill them before they make it out the gate. Two of the group try and die messy deaths (one of which has, of course, been set up beforehand so we can see the truth of the assertion); the others try to figure out how to get around the curse, while, of course, fighting amongst themselves and setting up stupid romantic subplots. The rest of the movie, not surprisingly, has to do with finding inventive ways to kill people.

To put it succinctly: this movie has not a thing to recommend it, unless you have a thing for really bad acting from really cute women. (Barnett, especially, has some unintentionally hysterical scenes.) You can safely ignore the fact that this movie exists, and you will be the happier for it. (half)


4/5 Fun Low Budget Horror Film
  by Evan (Los Angeles, CA.)
Considering the budget of this film, it worked for me - I was never bored - it was actually funny and scary at the same time. Worth a look if you like horror.