When will filmmakers ever come to the realisation that some of today’s best horror films didn’t achieve their cult status on torture [and tit] alone?
Amanda Righetti, Tom Riley, Cerina Vincent, Erik Palladino, Andrew-Lee Potts, Steven Pacey, Andrew Pleavin, Gil Kolirin, Chucky Venice, Clyta Rainford, Jeffrey Combs, Laia Gonzàlez
What’s more frightening – having someone jump out from a behind a door to startle you, or seeing someone’s badly-grazed leg start to ooze blood?
In terms of giving the heart a good work-out, I’d go with the ‘surprise!’ anytime – we’ve become accustomed to seeing blood, but you can never be prepared for a good old-fashioned scare… you jump out of your skin each-and-every time, no matter how many times the prank has been played on you!
And therein lies the problem with ”Return to House on Haunted Hill” – its much more about the syrup than the shock. When will filmmakers ever come to the realisation that some of today’s best horror films didn’t achieve their cult status on torture [and tit] alone? But more so, they won us over with their effective mesh of good-old fashioned thrills… and [blood] spills. ”A Nightmare on Elm Street”, ”Halloween”, even ”Scream” – successful because they knew what an effective suspense : gore ratio was.
The first ”House on Haunted Hill” (1999)– itself a remake of a spooky old Vincent Price movie – did a reasonably good job of combining jolts and gore, actually. It was also quite a fun film – encompassing some great special and visual effects (the rollercoaster stunt at the start of the film was a highlight); a terrific ensemble cast (not often you’d see the likes of Geoffrey Rush, Chris Kattan and Peter Gallagher in a horror film!) and a patchy but effective-enough script. It told of a bunch of folks who are all invited to spend the night in a haunted mansion – whoever survives, gets what’s in the vault.
Victor Garcia’s sequel, made on a far-lesser budget and without the all-star cast (though granted not even Rush was a big-star at that time – he was still finding his footing in Hollywood) of the original, fixes on the sister of one of the survivors of the first film (why, of course) as she and a photographer friend investigate the house that’s said to be the cause of her sister’s death (ta-da! no need for original actress to reprise role as sister; she’s recently bereaved!). Not much of a story hey? Well, it’s not – but thankfully, the filmmakers have chauffeured in a vat of blood and dismembered limbs. Eh. How very Rob Zombie of them.
Look, this has its moments – some of the back-story stuff with Jeffrey Combs (”Re-Animator”) reprising his role as the psycho doctor from the first film is fun – and there are a couple – I stress, a couple – of good scares, but if it were a choice between the sequel and its predecessor I’d go with the first ‘storey’; because that House wasn’t as much of a fixer-upper as this one is.
Among the minimal extras is a featurette that features the main characters, speaking to camera, about what makes them tick, who they are etc – some kind of ‘Confession’ thing – as well as several additional scenes (the most overrated extra on a DVD in my opinion is the ‘deleted scene’ – if they were any good, they would’ve been included in the film!); and a piece on Comb’s character. I believe the HD release has a bit more to offer – it apparently features a new-fangled feature that enables viewers to ‘make their own ending’ for the film; I wonder if one of the options is extracting all the gore and punching up the scares? ‘
Rating : 
Reviewer : Clint Morris
