Haunt Season is a strange film. It’s not the low-budget slasher B-movie that you can easily write off with its shallow characters and overreliance on fake blood. It’s something smarter, and, ultimately, more soulful than that. A tale of a serial killer descending upon the cast of a haunted house attraction, with each unsuspecting victim being picked off one by one in gory fashion, doesn’t exactly sound like an original idea or one that can be executed that cleverly.
However, Jake Jarvi’s film is an amalgamation of many moving parts. And while not all of them fit together to form one large picture, some sections have their merits and deserve recognition for the attempt, at least. This won’t be a crowd-pleaser for Halloween sleepovers nor will it be an endurance test for those who only want to creep themselves out at this time of the year. In fact, it may take an avid horror fan to appreciate Haunt Season to its fullest. It takes knowing the genre well to look past all the obvious pitfalls that less seasoned viewers would hone in on and see that something fresh is being done here — it just doesn’t have that much to do with scaring its audience.
What Is ‘Haunt Season’ About?
Haunt Season is really a slice-of-life movie. We get the customary opening kill that sets the events in place. What it really should be doing is establishing the stakes, but the first scene is over so quickly it’s hard to get any real sense of terror from it. The movie kicks into gear when it starts focusing on the main character, Matilda (Sarah Elizabeth). She’s a recent drama school graduate with no real direction in her career. Desperate for cash, she steps into the role of the screaming girl in lingerie who gets scalped by Danny (Adam Hinkle), one of the house’s longest-running members and best friend of Bradford (Stephen Kristof), the haunt’s leader. This is the role usually held by Taylor (Ana Dragovich), who the entire team thinks has just gone AWOL and bailed.
But what they don’t know and we do is that Taylor was the film’s opening victim, scalped by the masked killer. We’re introduced to an array of characters, from Celeste (Cydney Moody) who posts half-nude pictures in her haunt makeup to her adoring fans on Instagram, and Rosemary (Katelin Stack), the mother hen of sorts, to Mika (Tyra Renee) who is growing increasingly worried about the whereabouts of Taylor.
On Matilda’s first night, the killer descends on the house again, slashing one of the cast right before it opens. You would expect a paint-by-numbers formula from there: the entire team starts to realize that they’re being hunted, more people die, and there’s a climactic ending in the haunt where the final girl takes him down. But Haunt Season doesn’t give it up that easy. The kill, chase, and gore scenes are all incredibly rushed as if the filmmaker wanted to get it over and done with before moving on to the real meat of the film. Oddly, the film takes its time when following the characters when they’re removed from danger, and it’s as if Haunt Season doesn’t want to be a horror movie.
Like how Sean Baker sets out to show the mundane, everyday life of sex workers, Jarvi wants to show the realities of being a haunt cast member. Matilda lives in her car, and we get slow, lyrical sequences of her brushing her teeth by the side of the road. There are elongated conversations about women’s autonomy over their bodies, the inherent misogyny of Halloween traditions and horror tropes, and the paralyzing fear of leaving college and being out in the world. These definitely feel out of place when you cut back to a person getting beheaded by a killer dressed up as a pumpkin, but there’s still something indelibly soulful and honest to them.
‘Haunt Season’ Works as a Drama But Not as a Slasher Movie
Haunt Season ultimately doesn’t work because it just doesn’t have that much of a plot. Similar to Scream, its first half hangs on being a murder mystery. It’s obvious it’s one of the team, but you don’t expect to have your suspicions confirmed until the final 15 minutes. But Haunt Season reveals its killer around halfway through. Because it doesn’t take the time to build up dread and terror, the anonymity of the killer was the only driving force of its scariness. From there, it becomes a waiting game for the people to wake up and realize that that isn’t fake blood or a mannequin.
There are several instances when clueless members of the haunt will unknowingly be talking to the killer. Usually, these moments are a great source of tension, but due to the film’s limited runtime, it’s only a matter of seconds before they realize they’re in danger and are about to die. The final 30 minutes are pretty tedious and feel like you’re just watching the inevitable play out, and you know exactly what’s going to happen. There are some fun kill scenes like victims getting beheaded with shears, but as the scene builds up to the gory climax, the camera cuts away. Just when the bloody action picks up, the camera is suddenly shy, effectively gore-teasing the audience, and it becomes frustrating after the second kill.
There are a lot of touchstones and horror references that will please fans, with the direction and framing of one chase scene very similar to Drew Barrymore‘s Scream opener. It’s clear the team behind Haunt Season has a genuine love for all things Halloween and horror, but it’s just not enough to translate to a decent horror narrative. The killer and other motives are too undeveloped to evoke any real fear, and this part of the film ends up feeling like the annoying filler as you wait to go back to Matilda, Mika, V, and Celeste. In short, Haunt Season is a good character-drama, but a bad slasher movie.
‘Haunt Season’ Has a Cast That Makes Their Characters Feel Real
The cast of Haunt Season solidifies it as an enjoyable watch. Each character is charming in a way that completely disarms you because you know one of them has to be a killer. Sarah Elizabeth makes Matilda immediately likable, channeling Kristen Stewart with her awkward but charming and laid-back personality. Her anxiety over post-college life and fear of failing as an actor makes her an instantly empathetic character who we can resonate with. Her bond with the other women working at the haunt feels authentic, and it’s their burgeoning connection that makes you root against the killer. She also has one hell of a scream.
There’s an interesting idea to Haunt Season. If it wasn’t so bogged down by its commitment to being a run-of-the-mill slasher horror, it could have been something really new and fresh. A Kelly Reichardt-style lyrical look at the monotonous life of those who love to dress up and scare the hell out of people. The film is at its strongest when it settles on characters having the most ordinary of conversations with fake blood and Frankenstein makeup on their faces. A sequence of a party after the haunt shows Mike Leigh-adjacent conversations about the penis as a weapon and the betrayal of college friends who take the path you’re too scared to. However, it’s trying to be a slasher movie so we ultimately have to judge it by those standards. And as a slasher, with its thin plot and flat killer, Haunt Season doesn’t cut it.
Haunt Season releases in select theaters on October 4 and on VOD on October 8. Click below for showtimes.
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