A follow-up to William Castle’s 1959 House on Haunted Hill via a found-footage is not a terrible idea. Just when it’s executed so wretchedly as in the hands of writer/director Dustin Ferguson, who often excretes enough movies annually to number in the teens. Considering one of the credited producers is “Cheap AF Videos,” at least the subprime-mortgaged House lays all its cards on the table.
Set in 1978, this same-named sequel takes the guise of a live broadcast on Oct. 31 from WPIX-TV. At the titular abode, a reporter (Terrifier 3’s Daniel Roebuck) and a psychic (Jennifer Moriarty, Ferguson’s needless Spider Baby remake) investigate the supposedly spooky mansion. They encounter such fear inducers as a horny couple in a closet, a man in a gorilla mask hiding in another closet, and a science-class skeleton dropping from the stairwell.
Every couple of minutes, these on-the-scene antics cut back to an in-studio interviewer (Brinke Stevens, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama 2) and her guests, one of whom is played by Vincent Price’s daughter, Victoria. Then WPIX cuts to fake commercials for local shops and services.
Although it opens with a six-minute highlight reel of the ’59 original, Ferguson’s House on Haunted Hill doesn’t rip off Castle’s classic as much as it does Chris LaMartina’s WNUF Halloween Special. Although WNUF takes great pains to look the part to better sell the parody, Ferguson makes no such effort. You wouldn’t know the time frame was the ’70s if not for being told via supers. No iota of attempted legitimacy shows up; the flick even repeats its batch of ads — not for comedic effect (absent), but because Ferguson lacks ideas. When you’re shooting a new batch of video clickbait every Wednesday — Cocaine Cougar, 5G Zombies, Angry Asian Murder Hornets — who has time for second drafts?
This is the laziest, lousiest excuse for a motion picture since your little nephew stole your phone while you weren’t looking and recorded himself sticking out his tongue. Ferguson pushes and pushes and pushes this thing to an interminable 64 minutes. The closing credits might be the slowest I’ve seen ever, no exaggeration, as it takes one line 70 frickin’ seconds to make the valiant rise from the screen’s bottom to top.
I watched this Hill of beans on Fawesome, blessedly free because it’s heavily ad-supported. The ill-named streaming service’s numerous breaks of seven consecutive ads — real, largely shilling Progressive — were more entertaining.
House on Haunted Hill ’24 is “dedicated in living memory” to Messrs. Price and Castle, whom I’d like to think deflected the gesture from above with, “No, thanks. We’re good.” —Rod Lott