By Melissa Antoinette Garza
I had never heard of this flick before but the synopsis sounded a bit like Oculus so I thought it may be a low-budget Asylum-style rip-off. I liked Oculus so much that I was curious whether one that was similar but didn’t have a theatrical release would be any good. Typically, they’re not.
Well, first this wasn’t all that much like Oculus. Though, there were a lot of similarities, the tone and styles were completely different. In both movies, viewers see two separate timelines and how the events of one impact the other. In Haunter there were scenes with a mirror, however they were minimal and not the source of the horror as was the case with Oculus. The protagonist in both is a young woman who investigates and attempts to discover what led to the death of her family.
The film begins in the early 80s, on the day before Lisa’s (Abigail Breslin) 16th birthday. Lisa has been living the same day over and over again and everything down to pancakes for breakfast and her family watching Murder She Wrote in the evening is exactly the same. She tries to tell her parents and younger brother that they’re in this awful loop, but none of them have the awareness that she has.
She knows her family is dead. Meanwhile, in the present day, Olivia (Eleanor Zichy) who is a teenager that lives in the same house that Lisa did. Olivia is able to contact Lisa and lead her to a photo album that shows the old owner of the home had kidnapped and murdered dozens of women.
Now his ghost is still terrorizing the families that enter the home.
Though, this isn’t scary. It is quite interesting. It was of a much higher quality than I thought. It’s not very suspenseful but the characters are defined and definitely different from one another. The villain is despicable enough where one doesn’t find themselves rooting for him which is refreshing. He isn’t charismatic or good looking. He’s just a psychotic douchebag.
Overall, I highly recommend this. It was so much better than I imagined it would be. I was expecting an over-the-top almost lampooning of Oculus, but instead, at least story wise I saw a film that was almost as good.
Scared Stiff Rating: 7/10
