[House Of Bones]
Plot:Ghost Hunters get more than they bargained for while exploring a supposedly haunted house.

Cast:Charisma Carpenter, Lyle Brown, Collin Galyean, Antonino Paone, Adam Scott.

My Thoughts:"House Of Missed Opportunities".

Review:"House Of Bones" is the newest supernatural "slash" ghost "slash" haunted house "slash" indie horror movie...to hit the scene. The film doesn't really have much going for it, other than the casting directors managing to wrangle Charisma Carpenter into the cast. Carpenter, who always brings good performances, along with eye candy to most things she's in, fit pretty well into this movie. But the script failed her. In fact, it failed pretty much everyone.

The film involves a group of ghost hunters, who decide to film the latest episode of their reality/paranormal tv show, from an infamous house with a sordid and deadly past. It should come as no surprise that this movie debuted on Syfy Channel, a network which biggest source of pride and joy, is "Ghost Hunters", and it's 600 or so spin-off shows. In fact, isn't everyone kind of doing the ghost hunter thing these days? So the fact that this movie was a 2010 release, should also come as no surprise seeing as how we're knee deep in the age of catching spectres on camera and putting it on tv for all to see.

Which is what these good people decide to do. The house however, has other ideas. Which basically run along the lines of possessiing, killing, and trapping it's visitors there forever. But can you really blame the house? I mean it's a horror film where a group of people visit a known haunted house. Didn't they kind of bring it on themselves? I mean, even despite the clever story caviat of them being ghost hunters, and not stupid teens looking for a place to smoke pot and get shitfaced? The big problem with this movie, beyond it's bad directing, is the story's cliche and predictable elements.

For example, the house is haunted by the spirits of former slaves and people who were murdered there by an evil plantation owner. I mean really? Didn't we see this same thing in ''Dead Birds", the 2005 indie release? And really...how many times can we do the "killer ghosts of angry african slaves", or the "killer ghosts of angry native american settlers" thing in horror anyways? It's gotten to the point in supernatural horror where even the ghosts are no longer original.

How about giving us some spirits that are just tired of people hanging out in their digs? God I miss those days, which is something I thought I'd never say after seeing some indie horror films that used the aforementioned plot arc, and still wound up as complete disasters. But the problem with "House Of Bones" is it's spectres backstories are just lazily thought up. Then there are the characters. The characters, beyond Charisma, aren't interesting. I will give them credit however for not being annoying and intolerable.

Which is probably because these characters are over the age of 17. But they aren't very interesting people to watch on screen. Charisma is really the best character in the movie. Mostly because the picture is tailor made to push her as it's big star, as she's given the task of being the hot chick who shares a connection with the house, and who has freaky psychic abilities which kick in everytime she touches anything in the house.

But the movie defeats it's own purpose when the ghost hunters, who willingly admit they are total frauds, and don't really take ghost hunting or ghosts seriously, are confronted by real spirits. And instead of running like hell, they decide to stick around for the usual horror film reasons of..."uh, well it's not like we've got anything else better to do." And that's when the blood starts flowing. Which is when this film gets good.

The deaths are decent enough, and there's a cool scene where some undead corpses rise up from beneath the house, and start scaring the crap outta people. So atleast the writer and director knew how to bring the gore when necessary, and the films conclusion was certainly not what one would expect from a movie like this. So again, bucking trends, always a plus. "House Of Bones" has some major story issues, but down the end of it's run, it does enough good things to position itself as a decent ghost flick, instead of a total failure. But it misses a lot of opportunities to be great.

Positives:Charisma Carpenter's performance, some great gore and well-played scenes in the third act. Tolerable characters.

Negatives:The backstory of the house was way too cliche, the characters beyond Charisma's character weren't very interesting, and some decisions the characters made were extremely poor.

Overall:Two stars out of four.





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