#The Houses October Built

[animetit]

The Houses October Built (2014)

dir. Bobby Roe

[scary-movies-on-netflix]

HAUNT (2019)

This is ok.  We have a bunch of college kids.  Harper is being abused by her boyfriend, and her roommate convinces her to go out for Halloween.  She meets nice Guy who has a baseball bat (Chekov’s baseball bat).  The group of young people aren’t insufferable, so we don’t mind too much as they decide to look for a haunted house.  One appears on the side of the road and they head up to a building where a silent clown makes them sign waivers and place their cell phones into a lock box.

They enter the building and face some mild spooks.  They finally come to a room where a person wearing a witch mask appears to press a hot brand against the face of a young woman who’s yelling for help.  “I don’t want to die!  Please, please!  Just let me go!”  There is smoke and they are gone.  The young people are amazed and continue through the maze.

The young people split up and encounter some escalating spooks.  One group reaches a room where they have to reach into a hole to feel “body parts.”  A girl (Harper’s roommate) puts her arm through, and she is slashed with a razor!  Meanwhile, the other group is crawling through a maze, and one girl disappears!  A tall figure wearing a devil mask, in a red robe, urges the group forward, and they meet a dude with a chainsaw.  The groups are reunited, and they see the witch again.  She pulls out a body bag, inside of which is the missing girl!  She is unconscious.  The witch drives a metal poker through her skull and the curtains fall on the scene! 

Baseball guy leaves the others behind to try to find some help.  He enters a room with mannequins draped under white sheets, and also a real person draped with a white sheet!  This ghost person speaks to baseball guy and indicates that he’ll help them out of the maze.  Meanwhile, Harper, the girl we’ve been following, relates some childhood trauma to her friend.  Baseball guy and ghost dude arrive, and they begin to backtrack through the maze, to an emergency exit that Harper earlier spotted, but it only opens to a wall!  They go back to the maze where they lost the first girl, but ghost dude seals it off so only one guy makes it out.  Baseball dude begins to run around and do stuff.  All of the girls, including Harper, are suddenly confronted by the devil mask guy, and he stabs one girl in the head with a pitchfork!  He chases Harper and catches her and removes his mask, to reveal a weird tattooed face that’s been altered to look like a devil!  He touches Harper’s face and says, “Such a pretty mask.  Why don’t we take it off and find out who you really are?”  Then baseball dude appears and shoots devil guy with a nail gun!  Harper runs away.

Meanwhile, we’ve also seen the clown guy, who’s looking at their cell phones.  He takes off his mask to reveal that his face is tattooed and altered to look like a clown.  Also, one dude has made it outside, but ghost dude is there with him and bonks him on the head with a hammer.  Ghost dude removes his mask to show a face that’s been altered to look like a skull!  Which is kind of cool.  He then uses the hammer to rip off the dead dude’s face. 

Harper is running around and ends up in a room filled with knives and nails.  Baseball guy is also running around the doing stuff, but Harper is basically final girl at this point.  Anyway, in the knife room, she steps on a nail, and then her hands gets stuck on a glue trap on the floor.  She rips off a bunch of skin on her hands as she frees herself.  She ends up in an “escape room.”  Various clues lead her to a box under the bed, to find a key to escape, and there is a key inside the box!  Then the devil guy appears, and she stabs him in the eye with the key.  She opens the escape door, but it is attached to a shotgun!  Which shoots at her!  She takes a hit to the shoulder.

Devil guy follows Harper into the passage as the shotgun keeps firing repeatedly.  Harper shoves his head up just as it fires, to kill him.  Then a weird person with a skull mask comes for Harper, but Harper stabs them with devil guy’s pitchfork.  Unfortunately, it was her roommate tied up under a robe, with a mask on her face!  Then Harper’s abusive boyfriend shows up, because baseball dude earlier used Harper’s cell phone to send him her location, but he is quickly killed by the clown dude.  Then, back to Harper, chainsaw dude comes for her, but she shoots him with the shotgun.  Also, baseball guy tries to break down the wall to free Harper, but skull face guy attacks him!  Harper arrives just in time to bonk skull face guy on the head, and they run away. 

They find a hatch leading outside.  The witch is there.  Baseball guy yanks her legs down the hatch and Harper smashes the woman’s face with the hatch lid a bunch of times.  The clown dude decides to burn down the building.  Final Girl (i.e. Harper) and baseball guy discover that their car has been smashed up, but baseball guy grabs his baseball bat.  They are climbing a fence, but a final haunt dude is after them.  He shoots baseball dude, but the dude uses his baseball bat to beat the guy.  The pair run to the road, where they find Harper’s dead boyfriend’s truck. 

They end up at a hospital.  Harper has a vision of visiting her estranged mother, but the clown dude is there!  She wakes up, and a nurse says that she has to sign some waivers.  Harper realizes that the haunt people have their names and addresses from the waivers they signed way at the beginning of the movie!  We cut to clown dude, who is driving to Harper’s mom’s house.  He busts in with a sledgehammer, but he steps into a glue trap!  As he frees himself he falls onto a nail trap!  Harper appears with a shotgun.  “Let’s take off your mask,” she says, and she shoots him.

This was an ok addition to the “extreme haunted house” or “haunt” genre, akin to “The Houses October Built” (2014) and “Hell House LLC” (2015).  I didn’t dislike the protagonists.  The antagonists (weird people modifying their bodies to resemble monsters) were intriguing, and their makeup and prosthetics were quite good.  The kills were visceral, with decent practical effects.  That being said, there aren’t many spooks.  The haunted house attractions were pedestrian and repetitive; the sets were spacious and brightly-lit, not at all dark and claustrophobic, which one would normally associate with a classic haunt.  Compared to “The Houses October Built,” that movie took its time building up to the final haunt, with increasing freakiness in the various haunts and foreshadowing of the creepiness of the Blue Skeleton.  This movie has minimal build-up, with maybe one scene of Harper seeing the masked devil dude in an alley before arriving at the haunt.  (Was she suffering trauma or were they following her?)   The friends then arrive at the haunt with more than an hour left in the movie, so everything is padded out with extra rooms and people doing random stuff.  Overall, the movie lacked atmosphere.  It was forgettable.

[monsterpegger001]

I don’t care what anyone says.

Found Footage Horror Movies are TOP tier

[brokehorrorfan]

Terror Threads has released The Houses October Built shirts designed by Toto6 ($30) and Dismay Design ($30) and an enamel pin designed by Garreth Gibson ($13).

[musings-from-an-elder-goth]

Haunted House Cast Pics from Yesteryear

"We have 999 happy haunts here, but there's room for a thousand. Any volunteers?" —The Ghost Host at Disney's Haunted Mansion

One of the Tumblrs I follow, @vampryn, just posted that she's been hired as a scare actor and I'd like to officially welcome her to our very exclusive club. She's going to have a blast scaring folks, but the job is also exhausting, so I hope she's well rested before her first scare shift.

In honor of @vampryn, and all those who join the ranks of scare actors this year in thousands of haunted houses across North America, I thought I'd share some never-before-seen pics from my days as a scare actor. These photos are from 10 to 20 years ago. Enjoy and, as always, watch out for ghost hitchhikers that might try and follow you home. ;-)

Break a leg, @vampryn, and be sure to take lots of pictures!

creaturesfromelsewhere 9-15-2023

[splatteronmywalls]

[awkward-august]

Reposting my old memes

[sarah1228]

number 203 🎃🎃🎃👻👻👻

[horrorlamb]

Day 14. The Houses October Built (2014)

I really wanted to have the 2011 original included in this list, but I live in Australia, and we have weird distribution rights, and I couldn’t find it streaming anywhere, and I’m too broke to pay for it. So here we are with the remake. You should by now know how much I love found footage horror movies, so hopefully this one doesn’t disappoint. We follow five friends, 4 dudes and 1 girl on a road…

[dberl]

This is a pretty cool poster. I very much enjoyed the 2011 version of this movie, even though I found the ending a little lacking. They definitely corrected that in the 2014 version though

[raglanphd]

[scary-movies-on-netflix]

THE HOUSES OCTOBER BUILT (2014)

In this “found footage” movie a group of five friends ride around in an RV to find the most extreme haunts!  Three of the guys are somewhat interchangeable, one guy has a beard, and there is a woman, Brandy.  The first night they visit “The Haunt House,” in Caddo Mills, Texas.  The interior is dark and claustrophobic, confusing, and haunt actors follow them and provide some spooks.  They meet a strange girl in a doll-faced mask with stringy hair, who asks Brandy, “You wanna be a pretty doll like me?”  Afterwards some of them climb a ladder to overlook the crowd, which does not please the haunt workers.  As they are driving away, they see a creepy clown staring at them.  When they go to sleep, someone pokes around the outside of the RV.

Between the days we have documentary footage of interviews with haunt workers. Apparently, these are from an earlier version of the movie, from 2011, that I have not yet seen!

The next day as they drive to another haunt they talk about scary things, and Brandy says that she’s afraid of being buried alive.  Before arriving at the next location, they pull over to have some beers, and a weird guy emerges from the forest and makes them uncomfortable.  The next haunt is called “Rise,” in Eureka, Texas.  The attraction involves riding in a cart and shooting at “zombies” with a paintball gun, which looks awesome!  As they’re driving away, they come across a broken-down car, and the doll-faced girl is there!  She climbs into the RV and makes weird noises at them before leaving. 

The day after that, one of the dudes, who seems most invested in the trip, finally mentions “Blue Skeleton,” a super-extreme haunt that he’s looking for.  They arrive at “Terrorplex,” in Mansfield, Texas.  Before going inside, one of the dudes needs to pee, so he wanders into the forest, but a scary dude in a rabbit costume terrorizes him!  There are various creepy clowns, and when they enter the haunt it is highly reminiscent of “Hostel” (2005), with people seeming to experiment upon their victims behind glass panels.  It’s effectively creepy.  A strange woman calls out to Brandy, by name, as does another creepy clown. 

The following day, they discuss the nature of fear.  Someone says, “What someone’s idea of what scary is totally different from somewhere else.”  They end up going to a strip club, “Mickey Martin’s Ship Wheel” in Shallowater, Texas, where the nude women are wearing masks.  Brandy does not have a good time.  They then proceed to “Phobia,” along US Highway 248 in Texas.  The creepy clowns here appear a little more hostile and menacing than before.  They are not allowed to film inside the haunt.  Later, one guy talks to some dudes about the Blue Skeleton, while bearded dude hooks up with a haunt worker inside the RV.  Later still, some of the protagonists, including Brandy, are heading to the RV, where a clown accosts them and demands their recordings.  The clown proceeds to suggest sexual assault toward Brandy.  As they’re sleeping, someone enters the RV and films the sleeping friends!  They take one of the dude’s driver’s license and then touches Brandy’s face. 

They wake up and discover that the video of the RV intrusion has been posted to the internet!  They discover a large animal’s heart in the fridge!  They get a message directing them to proceed to a bar in Boca Raton to talk to “Giggles.”  The bar is seemingly filled with haunt workers, and a weird clown dances weirdly at them.  Brandy proceeds to the restroom, and the guys are summoned outside to talk to Giggles.  Some random dudes grab the camera and follow Brandy into the restroom, where they surround her and, again, suggest sexual assault.  She runs out to her friends.  Later, in the RV, they hear someone walking atop the vehicle.  They prepare to drive away, but they are surrounded by creepy haunt workers!  Many of whom we’ve seen earlier in the film!  Then the people disappear! 

The next morning, it is Halloween.  They are having breakfast, and someone throws a pumpkin at the RV door.  Inside the pumpkin is an invitation, “Bourbon Street, 10 p.m.”  They find blue masks attached to the front window.  They proceed to New Orleans, Louisiana, but Brandy looks like she’s over it.  They reach Bourbon Street, and it is full of revelers.  One of the protagonist dudes follows another stranger dude wearing a blue mask down an alley, and protagonist dude is attacked by the doll-faced girl and other creepy clowns!  His friends call him, and a voice mail says to proceed to a certain intersection.  They drive out there in the RV, where they find a bus and a guy in a skeleton mask.  One guy goes out to meet him, but then some masked dudes bust into the RV and drag everyone out.

The friends are bound and hooded and put on the bus.  After some driving, the dudes are taken out, but Brandy is left on the bus as it drives to another location!  The bus finally stops, and a voice tells her to grab the camera on the seat adjacent to her and film everything she sees.  Brandy proceeds into a creepy house, and we see that all her friends are in similar houses.   It seems that they’ve all been given cameras.  Brandy is captured by a guy in a mask, as is everyone else.  Finally, we see Brandy in the trunk of a car.  She finally finds herself in a coffin filled with animals remains.  The lid closes down on her and she is buried alive, as are all her friends!  The camera focuses on a guy in a skeleton mask.

This was good.  Even ten years on, the particular found footage concept holds up well.  The various haunts have character and are well-filmed, dark and confusing.  The dudebro characters wear a bit thin toward the end, but the character of Brandy serves to ground them.  There is an increasing and logical sense of dread as the protagonists approach the Blue Skeleton, but the movie does suffer from the question of how “extreme” any haunt can be.  One of the dudes wonders this aloud, to no satisfactory answer.  The final scenes are little more than variations on earlier haunts, except now the protagonists are grabbed and tossed into coffins, a la “The Vanishing” (1988).  The movie isn’t shy about leaning into the fears a woman, Brandy, might have for just being a woman existing in the world, what with the threat of sexual assault.  Her fears in the movie are just a little too real.

[tctmp]

Horror  Thriller

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: October Wrap-Up.

Gr8 news: I am no longer very far behind on my NaNo prep reading!! I had to drop JUST LIKE HOME (reread) and HOUSE OF LEAVES, but I got through the rest of my Haunted House and/or Aliens and/or Parasite/Fungus TBR. Here they all are!

Photos and/or reviews linked:

SHRIEK - ★★★★ I think SHRIEK Is my favorite volume of the Ambergris trilogy, taken as a whole--the one-way conversation Duncan was having with Janice was a really neat narrative choice, and then the reveal in the Afterword's Afterword was, in true VanderMeer fashion, mind-blowing.

FINCH - ★★★★ I was actually surprised by how much I liked this one. It helped me figure out a LOT about what kinds of power dynamics I enjoy in borderline-dystopian fiction, and what intrigues me most about limited agency. It wrapped the story up almost too neatly, for a VanderMeer, but I did still have a good time and blitzed through it quickly. Given this one and SHRIEK, I'm counting the Whole Series as a Four-Star read--I'd like to reread it someday, now that I know what's going on.

LEECH - ★★★★★ (reread) STILL ONE OF MY ALL-TIME FAVES, OFFICIALLY!! It's very gothic and heavy and fucked up, but it does FASCINATING things with POV, and worldbuilding, and storytelling frameworks. PLEASE check the content warnings, but if none of those are hard no's for you, definitely pick this one up. I suspect anyone for whom Animorphs was a Formative Influence will adore this (but so far my sample size is really only 1)--please prove me right.

A HOUSE WITH GOOD BONES - ★★★½ This was fun! Not my favorite Kingfisher (that award still goes to HOLLOW PLACES), but I had a good time--I laughed, I squealed over vultures, I blasted through pages to get to the end.

STARLING HOUSE - ★★★★ Alix E. Harrow always manages to write exactly my catnip, somehow. Maybe it's the ADHD, but I'm constantly finding connections to my own writing projects in her work, and STARLING HOUSE was no exception! I liked that this one was more modern, and the sibling dynamic was precious, and I love weird sentient houses where space is more of a suggestion than a hard and fast rule. I'll probably reread this one for Driscoll purposes!

WOODWORM - ★★★½ So much rage in such a tiny volume, and I was Absolutely Here For It. I don't tend to read much lit fic, but I do try to read a lot in translation, and I thought this one did very cool stuff with Spanish--the prose felt natural in English, but I loved the linguistic details the translators left in Spanish and how much depth that added. I feel like this one might be a good fit for Carmen Maria Machado fans, too.

HOW TO SELL A HAUNTED HOUSE - ★★★ Call this a low 3, from me. It was Fine, I guess. I liked what he did with the act structure (labeling parts as stages of grief was very cool), and I liked the family dynamics and history, but a lot of the humor didn't land for me (I got a few sensible chuckles, but a bunch of it wasn't funny), and the "oh this author is A Man, huh" moments made me roll my eyes (seriously: Who thinks about their ~breasts~ when an angry taxidermied squirrel is clawing down your shirt?? No One With Breasts, Mr. Dude). This book did at least teach me that I'm not really interested in gore (it's just boring, unlike body horror, my beloved). I might still pick up HORRORSTOR, but I probably won't look into most of his other stuff, if this one is indicative of his general style. Meh.

THE ART OF EXCESS - No rating (didn't read the whole thing). At the end of ALWAYS COMING HOME, Richard Powers mentioned this book as the reason he finally committed to ALWAYS, so I was curious what this Tom Leclair dude had to say about it back in 1989. I had a heck of a time tracking down a copy (it's very out of print, and my local library had to source it from the Library of Congress for me), but I didn't want to buy it to read just the preface/intro/epilogue, because I haven't read any of the other texts he analyzes. Leclair's style was very readable, and I was intrigued by his framework, but I found some of his conclusions eye-rolly, given his sample size. I posted this one because I think Library of Congress books are fun, but I didn't add it to my Goodreads.

BLACK TIDE - ★★★½ This one had me rolling my eyes in the first couple chapters, and I was afraid I wasn't going to like it, but once Fucked Up Shit Started Happening, the momentum really picked up and didn't stop--I blitzed through it way past my bedtime on a school night. It was fucked up and weird and tense and bloody pull-no-punches horror, but it ALSO made me laugh, and I loved our two fuck-ups surviving the apocalypse together. NOTE: Dogs (and Gulls) Are Not Safe, and the cast is small enough that it matters a lot :( if you can't stomach animal harm/death, skip this.

A HALF-BUILT GARDEN - 81/338 pages read; will report back. Enjoying it so far! Glad I put it on my NaNo prep reading list, though not quite for the reasons I planned--the reflections on motherhood as well as parenting outside the binary have been interesting, so far (and that's relevant for my own haunted house endeavors!). A much gentler ride than BLACK TIDE, and the immersive tech reminds me of Murderbot's world, just Earthbound.

Overall! Fabulous month for reading! Anytime I think "wow I need A Break™ from writing or life," this is the type of reading I mean--where I can spend a couple weeks annihilating books within a day to Refill the Words Reservoir.

Under the Cut: A Note About ~*★Stars★*~

Historically, I have been Very Bad™ about assigning things Star Ratings, because it's so Vibes Heavy for me and therefore Contingent Upon my Whims. I am refining this as I figure out my wrap up posts (epiphany of last month: I don't like that stars are Odd, because that makes three the midpoint and things are rarely so truly mid for me)(I have hacked my way around this with a ½). Here is, generally, how I conceptualize stars:

★ - This was Bad. I would actively recommend that you do NOT read this one, no redeeming qualities whatsoever, not worth the slog. Save Yourself, It's Too Late For Me. Book goes in the garbage (donate bin).

★★ - This was Not Good. I would not recommend it, but it wasn't a total waste or wash--something in here held my interest/kept my attention/sparked some joy. I will not be rereading this ever. Save Yourself (Or Join Me In Suffering, That Seems Like A Cool Bonding Activity).

★★★ - This was Good/Fine/Okay/Meh. I don't care about this enough to recommend it one way or another. Perfectly serviceable book, held my interest, I probably enjoyed myself (or at least didn't actively loathe the reading). I don't have especially strong feelings. You probably don't need to save yourself from this one--if it sounds like your jam, give it a shot! Just didn't resonate with me particularly powerfully. I probably won't reread this unless I'm after something in particular.

★★★½ - I liked this! I'll probably recommend it if I know it matches someone's vibes or specific requests, but I didn't commit to a star rating on Goodreads. More likely to reread, but not guaranteed.

★★★★ - I really enjoyed this!! I would recommend it (sometimes with caveats about content warnings or such--I tend to like weird fucked up funny shit, and I don't have many hard readerly NO's). Not a perfect book for me by any means, but Very Good. This is something I would reread! Join me!!

★★★★★ - I LOVED THE SHIT OUT OF THIS, IT REWIRED MY BRAIN, WILL RECOMMEND TO ANYONE AND EVERYONE AT THE SLIGHTEST PROVOCATION (content warning caveats still apply--see 4-star disclaimer). Excellent book, I'll reread it regularly, I'll buy copies for all my friends, I'll try to convince all of Booklr to read it, PLEASE join me!!

[hatchetfield-scarecrow]

Day Five: The Houses October Built (2014)

Cool concept, but not the best execution. It wasn’t bad, and it had some good scenes and creepy character designs. That ending was fucked and I actually liked it, and that was probably the scariest part for me. There were a lot of scenes I feel like weren’t necessary and didn’t move the plot forward or make sense. This reminded me of the Poughkeepsie tapes. I thought in the beginning it was supernatural, and I’m not sure if I’m bummed or pleasantly surprised that wasn’t the case.

Watching a horror movie every day of October, again! Had fun doing this last year so I wanted to try again.

Day One: Tales from the Crypt. (1972)

Fun premise, I love a good anthology film. The first Santa story was genuinely the scariest to me, but they were all solid stories and went surprisingly dark. I’m trying to rank all of them, but I don’t think I can, they were all really good.

Day Two: The People Under the Stairs. (1991)

I’ve heard this film being called the Get Out of the 80s, and I definitely see why. I loved the whole movie, but I think the first half is definitely better and more tense. I liked the dynamic between Fool and Leroy. The second half of the film was more comedic but I can’t complain, I’m glad it had a happy ending.

Day Three: The Ruins. (2008)

I read the book this was based on recently, and thought it would be really hard to adapt that as a film… and I was right. Changes are bound to happen, especially with a book as brutal as this, but the changes were stupid. The characters in the books are all annoying but realistic, and I was still rooting for them and liked them, because Scott Smith really put you in your head. I was scared of the plants in the book, but not so much with the film. The vines in the film are more aggressive, which makes them less threatening than they are in the books oddly enough. There’s no tension or dawning sense of doom when you realize the vines are just playing with these people. They also made the Mayans more stupid and aggressive, which was pointless and I hated. In the books they’re clearly not enjoying this and tried their best to save these idiots, they have a system and unfortunately have to do this. Didn’t like the change in ending, and don’t get why they changed so many characters fates and roles. The ending was so dumb, apparently there’s an alternate ending but that’s also dumb. I probably wouldn’t have liked this movie any more than if I hadn’t read the book, but it’s even worse knowing what it’s based on.

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

SUMMARY: Recovering from the trauma of being kidnapped last Halloween by the Blue Skeleton, five friends head back out to visit more haunted house attractions. But when signs of the Blue Skeleton start appearing again a new terror begins.