There's nothing like a good slasher movie, and many slasher movies you can find in your exploration of horror cinema can best be described as nothing like a good slasher movie. HauntedWeen isn't good, not in the standard ways, but it's a lot of fun, and certainly does better than a lot of slasher movies that are less interesting, and less enjoyable.
Things start in the classic way, a prank gone wrong. A young boy accidentally kills a young girl, but he's then protected by his mother for years, instead of being treated by any proper professionals. Sadly, mother passes away, leaving that young boy as a confused man, living in what is assumed by everyone else to be an abandoned house. Which is where our cast of disposable fraternity students comes in, looking to make money by turning the abandoned house into a haunted house experience. It's certainly going to be full of scares, but they may be much more realistic than intended.
The only film written and directed by Doug Robertson, this is the kind of oddity that many will hate, but some (like myself) will be slightly charmed by. The acting and effects are both quite crude, the dialogue isn't polished, and there are many scenes that feel like filler on the way to a satisfying end sequence, but it's a group of people trying to do their best with very limited resources. Although released in 1991, this feels like it's from some years earlier (I don't know the schedule, sometimes these independent productions can take years to film and find distribution, depending on the availability of everyone).
Ethan Adler does a decent job as the killer, Eddie, and the setting allows him to have one or two moments that feel memorable for all the right reasons, and Brien Blakely, Blake Pickett, Brad Hanks, Leslee Lacey, et al. do fairly well as they remain part of a large group of potential victims to be hacked and slashed once our killer starts to get his groove on. Nobody stands out, but that just makes it easier to sit and wait to see who won't make it to the end credits.
There's plenty to pick apart here, especially on a technical level, but this won me over. Using the familiar slasher movie template, it has a great idea at the heart of it, even if Robertson cannot do quite enough with his film-making to match the potential of the premise, and there are one or two well-executed scares on the way to the third act. I'm not going to consider it any kind of forgotten classic though, I'm not that blinded by my affection for it. I would tentatively recommend it to fans of the sub-genre though, especially those who have already sat through so many other films in this vein, and are already used to the weaknesses often outweighing the strengths.
6/10
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