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The
Shunned House |
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Alex is intrigued by the history of an old house and decides to
bring his girlfriend Rita with him to do a little investigating
of his own. As we follow notes and diaries from people who used
to live in the house, we soon learn that there's something strange
going on. But what Alex doesn't seem to realise is that if you
dig to deep into the past, the past will come back to haunt you.
The Shunned House starts out slowly with a quite uninteresting
opening scene along with unimpressive opening titles. Soon we
find that the actors are Italian and that they obviously are in
desperate need of more English lessons. One hour later I'm hiding
behind my pillow, screaming my guts out. The Shunned House is one
of the most original, creepy and disturbing horrormovies of the
new millennium. It uses such simple, yet creative elements to scare
the hell out of you.
Director Ivan Zuccon doesn't treat this film all that well actually
as some scenes feel as if they should have been filmed slower and
with a bit more light. But despite the far from flawless directing,
it still looks pretty damn good. The acting is probably good, I just
wish that they had dubbed the actors instead of forcing them to
speak English even if they weren't very good at it. For example,
according to Rita, she ate rats. Obviously she meant that she hates
rats but she forgot the H in that sentence.
While I was pleasantly surprised over how good this movie was,
I almost knew before I watched it that I would like it to some
extent since it's based on a story written by H.P. Lovecraft.
This still went far beyond my expectations despite the fact that
the first 30 minutes or so were pretty unimpressive. In the end
I even felt as if this deserved five stars but considering that
I was close to shutting it off after the first ten minutes I thought
that it didn't deserve more than four. This is all in all an
excellent movie though which is perfect for a rainy night.
While there is a lot of blood in this, there's not a lot of
graphical gore with the exception from one scene, which I won't
mention since I don't want to ruin the surprise. We don't really
need a lot of gore though since this is such a disturbing movie
at some times that you would just feel sick if they would have
thrown in a chainsaw or something in there. Keep in mind that
this really is more of a ghost story and for being a ghost story
it is very gory.
Creepy and atmospheric music to set just the right mood. I also
loved the violin music, I think it worked very well for the movie.
It surprised me that Brain Damage Films released a film like this
since it wasn't very gory. Instead this was a very pleasant and
spooky surprise, which will have you on the edge of your seat after
30 minutes into the movie. I highly recommend this movie to anyone
who enjoys high quality creepiness. But beware, I thought this
was disturbing at some points.
Review By: AnthroFred
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