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And therein lies the problem with Return to House on Haunted Hill
– its much more about the syrup than the shock. When will filmmakers
ever come to the realisation that some of today’s best horror films
didn’t achieve their cult status on torture [and tit] alone? But more
so, they won us over with their effective mesh of good-old fashioned
thrills… and [blood] spills. A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, even Scream – successful because they knew what an effective suspense : gore ratio was.
The first House on Haunted Hill
(1999) – itself a remake of a spooky old Vincent Price movie – did a
reasonably good job of combining jolts and gore, actually. It was also
quite a fun film – encompassing some great special and visual effects
(the rollercoaster stunt at the start of the film was a highlight); a
terrific ensemble cast (not often you’d see the likes of Geoffrey Rush,
Chris Kattan and Peter Gallagher in a horror film!) and a patchy but
effective-enough script. It told of a bunch of folks who are all
invited to spend the night in a haunted mansion – whoever survives,
gets what’s in the vault.
Victor Garcia’s sequel, made on a
far-lesser budget and without the all-star cast (though granted not
even Rush was a big-star at that time – he was still finding his
footing in Hollywood) of the original, fixes on the sister of one of
the survivors of the first film (why, of course) as she and a
photographer friend investigate the house that’s said to be the cause
of her sister’s death (Ta-Da! No need for original actress to reprise
role as sister; she’s recently bereaved!). Not much of a story hey?
Well, it’s not – but thankfully, the filmmakers have chauffeured in a
vat of blood and dismembered limbs. Eh. How very Rob Zombie of them.
Look, this has its moments – some of the back story stuff with Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator)
reprising his role as the psycho doctor from the first film is fun –
and there are a couple (I stress, a couple) of good scares, but if it
were a choice between the sequel and its predecessor I’d go with the
first ‘storey’; because that House wasn’t as much of a fixer-upper as
this one is.
EXTRAS
Among the minimal extras is a featurette that features the main
characters, speaking to camera, about what makes them tick, who they
are etc – some kind of ‘Confession’ thing – as well as several
additional scenes (the most overrated extra on a DVD in my opinion is
the ‘deleted scene’ – if they were any good, they would’ve been
included in the film!); and a piece on Comb’s character.
I believe the
HD release has a bit more to offer – it apparently features a
new-fangled feature that enables viewers to ‘make their own ending’ for
the film; I wonder if one of the options is extracting all the gore and
punching up the scares? Conclusion:
Movie 50% Extras: 40%
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