The only reason I'm giving this a 2 is because of the interesting content that may or may not be real revolving around their interviews with haunted house workers. It's boring, predictable, and I think by now everyone with a clown phobia has made a decision to avoid movies like this, not flock to them. For those of us looking for a thoughtful movie, a scary movie, a movie that you'll look back on the next day and go "Damn, that was good," this is not it. This is lazy, self-indulgent and drags across the screen like the corpse we never get dragged off camera but kind of wish we do, since nobody is the least bit likable. You sit through the end because you think, as with most FF movies, the slow build will pay off. It does not. If you think you can guess the ending, you're probably right, if you're over the age of eight. That's about as much worldly experience you need to call it. You want to be scared sleepless? You want amazing writing and genius use of FF perspective? You want Hell House LLC. That movie kicks this house's butt, on so, so many levels. I watched this thinking I'd get a least a similar thrill ride, and what I got was held hostage on a stupid RV for an hour and a half of my life. Oh, and hey, literally everyone involved with this movie? I also see there's a sequel who's trailer advertises any semblance of what you wanted us to believe about the ending—that right there kills your market for those who you wanted to leave hanging. You guys need to get off this ride before you dig your own grave.

well, the premise is interesting – a group of friends travelling Texas and Louisiana in search of a secret haunted house experience that's supposedly more 'extreme'/scarier than any other. unfortunately the execution doesn't do the story justice the camera never stops bouncing and swiveling like the director is jerking off with it through the entire film. seriously, it's bad even for the found footage style. the first 30 minutes are primarily dull, seemingly unscripted banter between dull, undeveloped characters. i guess the lack of scripted dialogue is meant to add to the documentary-style, found footage presentation, but it doesn't really add anything to the story, and you can stretch it out only so far before it begins to look like obvious filler. edit out all the unnecessary parts of this film and shorten the scenes that drag on to the point of killing all tension, and you'd have a marginally interesting 20 - 30 minute short. i can't imagine why anyone thought it needed a sequel, or who would want to sit through it after having watched this, but i for one will be looking elsewhere for entertainment this holiday season

Nevermind the actual film, the idea is one of the most potent I've seen in some time.A group of friends set out in a van in search of horror, haunted house attractions scattered around rural America. It's the days leading up to Halloween so we can have a pervasive atmosphere of masks and monsters roaming the streets. I like that it's a glimpse outside the usual and tied to a larger fabric of make-believe.The idea is that we'll venture into these houses where horror is supposed to be controlled around us, the work of fiction, only to discover more slippery boundaries of truth. This would touch at the very essence of horror, exploiting the same perturbations that move viewers in both the actual houses and film; see, we know it's not real, but what to do when your body tells you otherwise?So nevermind that it's actors we see and scripted reactions. Some of the most potent footage here are from within these houses where we go in with a camera and a swirl of monsters lunges at us, staged but it comes alive. I'm guessing these are actual places that partnered with the filmmakers and this is what tantalized me going in; it would be at least in part an actual tour of that America that goes to pilgrimage in actual places.They manage to bungle this for my taste, the part where fiction blurs and we go to something that comes alive in the moment of watching.For one, they chose the "found footage" mode (silly name, largely the baggage of Blairwitch - it really means "someone is filming this now"). It's the most apt choice I've seen since Last Exorcism, but no one ever films a sense of place and passing time, a physical sense of journey; they waste it on lots of blathering around a camera so that it ends up feeling like an episode of cable TV. Indicative of the actual makers holding the camera I guess.And then there's the ending. This is where the staged scenarios in these attractions don't cut it any more as the characters push for more and more "real" stuff. Lo, there's rumor of a secret place that you can only reach by invitation. But once there, it's the most obviously staged part of the film, the complete opposite of where we were meant to be viewing-wise.So this is a miss, filmmakers with maybe the strongest idea of any of their peers this year but none of the tools of insight to cultivate it. They outline enough for me to imagine it in more intuitive hands so all in all I would have this over the next paranormal film.Someone has gone out with the urge for horror in mind (and it's our very urge to inhabit illusion that made us build these houses), thinking he knows illusion from real, but it begins to spill outside, perturbing reality. From a certain point on, the apparitions become aware of someone watching, aware inside the fiction, so conspire to stage the real thing as a cosmic prank that shatters lives.Watch The Funhouse, Hooper's film driven by the same instinct, a funhouse that extends from the actual place to haunt the whole film.

The trouble with nearly all movies in the "Found Footage" genre is I have trouble getting scared at a movie when I'm so busy trying to see what's going on and I can't stop wondering "Okay, now who has the camera going now?" Then there comes a point where invariably I think "So why aren't they helping their friend(s) stay alive instead of filming?" or "Oh, the killers have the camera, now. Then how are they able to film screaming people in coffins after they've been buried alive? ""Houses Built in October" has its moments, but you have to wait a long time for them to happen. Meanwhile we have to endure six young yuppies whose trite conversations are endless. Guess this was to convey how they were just ordinary folks, shucks, just like us. I don't hang out with dull people, myself, so I suppose the director and writer thought some of us needed the exposure. They were wrong there, too.Just like "Blair Witch Project" this one gets creepy in the last 20 minutes. Then what happens to these not-very-bright people is so ugly you sort of feel sorry that they're being killed because it seems to be happening just because they're boring. Or stupid. Anyway, some of the haunted houses are interesting, but the film makers couldn't even make the gratuitous titty bar scene fun. It's just there.