The Houses October Built is a found footage film about a group of friends on a road trip trying to find the most extreme haunted houses during the week leading up to Halloween. One of the friends is making a documentary and interviews haunted house employees and patrons to reveal how unregulated everything is. Some of the haunted house owners and employees don’t appreciate their curiosity. Things take a turn for the worse, but is it part of the gimmick or should they get worried?
The Houses October Built ended up in my queue because I have a weakness for the found footage genre. Unfortunately The Houses October Built used the “how we got here” narrative device, which means that it began with one of the final scenes. I despise this opening because any suspense regarding what is going to happen in the movie is completely out the window, and now I am just counting down to when a character is going to be wearing that outfit. I also ended up thinking that the characters are dumb for not sensing danger earlier than I probably would have without seeing that scene. If it were not for this initial mistake, I would mildly recommend seeing The Houses October Built, but there is no point, and unless you are a found footage fanatic like me, skip it.
Unlike most found footage films, I liked that it was a group of friends, four guys and one woman, and not a group of couples so there were no ridiculous romantic subplots. The guys were protective of her. The only time that the group almost changed their behavior was when a black guy celebrating Halloween appeared at a campground at a fire that they knew was recently extinguished, which was not the weirdest thing to happen to them. If you listen to The Black Guy Who Tips, a podcast, I would give it 100, which is not a compliment.
The main problem that I had with The Houses October Built
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is that the movie is not supposed to be supernatural, but somehow one feature from each haunt from the beginning of the film has the time in their busiest season to follow this specific RV and terrorize them days and miles later and all these characters from different haunts work together to kill them? They are working in a haunt because they need money, and generally psychos like convenience. Instead The Houses October Built wants me to believe that carnies made the time, sacrificed money, spent hours on the web working together and used gas to follow these guys across state lines? If it were just the people from the final haunt messing with them, I would not have a problem with the denouement. Seasonal workers do not mess with their finances during their busiest seasons. If they were that pissed to organize and mess with the intrusive group, they would do it after Halloween. The Houses October Built was going for a Deliverance vibe, but practically it does not make sense.
The Houses October Built really builds up the idea that criminals are working for the haunts or exhibits go wrong. The Houses October Built suggests that an employee or visitor could accidentally get hurt and no one would know until the place was getting ready to be shut down. The Houses October Built does not really use those ideas in the denouement. Instead all haunt employees are inherently psycho. I know that it is hella tropey, but if they could signal on the radio that there was a recently released prisoner who was dangerous, that would have at least continued the first theme. Also what is the point of attacking the group in a deserted area and not using them in a haunt on Halloween with patrons just happily watching the group be terrorized without intervening because they don’t realize the friends are victims. The Houses October Built missed an opportunity for meta scares.
The Houses October Built set up the fact that the woman is claustrophobic, does not like coffins or snakes then buries her alive with no snakes! What the hell, The Houses October Built! Why did you even mention the snakes then? Somehow The Houses October Built made being buried alive anticlimactic, which I did not think was possible.
There were two points when I thought the friends would just say screw this road trip and leave. First, when the porcelain masked little girl from the first haunt randomly walks into their trailer, and they are not near her haunt. They don’t even mention how weird it is that she came this far. Second, The Houses October Built uses one of my favorite found footage moments, when the perp secretly films the people behind the camera usually while they are asleep. Once that footage went on the web, and they knew it, they should have burned rubber returning home. I did not buy that the two friends would keep it a secret from the others.
The Houses October Built is ultimately disappointing because there are many separate elements that make the story interesting, but do not come together in a cohesive manner.