Review of A Haunted House (1975) by Andrew D — 21 May 2013

I think that this film proves that the spoof subgenre of comedy has officially died, pun intended. Marlon Wayans of Scary Movie 1 and 2 fame stars as Malcolm Johnson, a man who's girlfriend has decided to move in with him.

Wanting to document everything they do together, he decides to buy a video camera to film everything. However, when spooky things begin to happen around the house, the couple must find out what's going on and figure out how to put an end to it.

Now, I understand that the film is R rated and in today's world, sex jokes and cursing jokes are inevitable. However, when these kinds of jokes fall flat and come across as stale and predictable, it's not funny! I don't know how many times I rolled my eyes at all the "jokes" that this film tried to dish out because they were just painful to sit through.

It's quite clear that this film's target audience is the people who laugh at farcical jokes very easily. This may seem funny to them, but it wasn't to me. I've seen these kinds of jokes done before and I'm sick of seeing the same thing over and over again, and this is coming from a person who loves seeing horror films which dish out hundreds of sequels in their franchises.

Marlon Wayans is the only saving grace in this film, but he only had about 5-6 minutes worth of funny material. The best part of the film had to be the last scene before the end credits started to roll when **spoiler alert if you really care beyond this point** he celebrates the fact that he lived before he's pulled away by the possessed Kisha.

The rest of the characters were severely unfunny, especially Nick Swardson's psychic role. The whole point of his character is to say that he has a huge crush on Malcolm, but it just comes off as stupid.

It wasn't funny to begin with and it certainly wasn't funny by the end when all the characters come together. Like most spoof movies, the plot is lazy but that's because it's a parody of Paranormal Activity.

Normally, I'd welcome a spoof of this awful film series. In fact, I loved how The Simpsons made fun of it last year in Treehouse of Horror XXIII. However, because it was becoming even more boring than Paranormal Activity, I couldn't stand it.

Stay as far away from this film as you possibly can. It's a shame that a sequel is already in the works because this film is not funny AT ALL!