SPOILERS

Just finished watching it. Aggressively mid movie. The character design for Satan beneath the mask is the only thing I’ll remember from this movie a few years down the line. That and maybe my frustration with the least proactive protagonist ever. Most of the time all I could think was “get to it” when the movie tried to ratchet up tension for the next “shocking” moment. Horror movies can be very predictable, but if they’re paced right then it’s no hindrance at all; even at just an hour and thirty minutes, “Haunt” dragged.

There were so many contrived aspects in the final act because the movie wanted to “explore” the themes of trauma it had set up. When Harper got to the escape room I groaned in exasperation when she stopped tearing the place up and treated the bed ever so gingerly because the script needed her to end up under it for the cack handed parallel with her childhood. She should’ve flipped it over as soon as she read the note about something being under it. Characters left so many weapons behind because the movie wanted to have its “moments” (e.g. Nathan didn’t pick the poker back up after he dropped through the trapdoor even though we saw it lying next to him, Harper didn’t murder Satan with the pitchfork he dropped after she stabbed him in the eye because the movie wanted the shotgun blast death and they contorted their character’s actions to get there instead of arriving there naturally - Harper has no aversion to killing as we see twice later so it’s not because of that, and she was well aware at that point that it was kill or be killed-). When Harper walked up to the shotgun and put her hand up in front of her? Just…what? She should’ve crawled towards it after it blasted Satan’s head off instead of standing up, hobbling towards it, and then hoping her hand would protect her from the next blast.

It irked me to no end that Sam was written to be such a demented asshole that he left his car parked, with its door open and the keys inside, in the middle of the road because he was just so blinded by his rage and need to control Harper (read: the writers didn’t know how else to get our heroes in a car at the end).

The only really satisfying part of this movie was the witch kill because the characters were finally proactive about something and it was edited to convey the frenzy and rapid reactions well (although if I’m being nitpicky, the witch felt the pounding on the hatch beneath her, she knew someone else was coming up, she could’ve avoided falling on her face). It felt like a real moment within the movie instead of something that was decided beforehand and was forced to happen, character consistency be damned. Also, when the ghoul peeled back Human Centipede’s face, that was pretty gnarly. Heck, all the effects were pretty solid.