8213: Gacy House

Ok, here's the thing about movies like this, these "found footage" type movies.  Their main reason for popularity among filmmakers, besides their apparent popularity (which will die off if terrible ones keep coming out) is that they can be made cheaply, and as typically "ghostly" affairs, they don't have to utilize a lot of blood.  In fact, if this movie were made in black and white, it would have been even cheaper, so I don't know why the filmmakers went with color here, and I definitely don't know why they decided to try and have a big bloody massacre when they didn't have the budget for it.  It wasn't necessary and there are enough little creepy touches that show that the movie knew how to do little ghostly scares without trying to resort to something big that they just didn't have the budget to handle.  the movie would have been a lot better if it had stayed within the constraints of its budget.

The fact that the plot got too big for its britches isn't the only problem with this movie.  The characters in this movie are hideously stupid, and they honestly do some of the dumbest things I've ever seen characters DO in a movie like this.  I mean, the movie "Grave Encounters" had a character who was supposed to be a psychic who went around chanting and proclaiming that he felt negative energy and whatever, but that movie realized early on how annoying that could get and had the guy drop the act before it got old.  This movie has an annoying psychic who stays annoying throughout the whole movie, and she keeps casting runes and chanting stupid made-up rhymes and telling everyone to leave the house, even though they never listen to her and spend most of their time mocking her.  In fact, none of these people seem to like each other, and all they do is complain about each other on camera, and we have to wonder why they even bothered to come to this house if they don't really believe that anything is going to happen.

Does anything ghostly happen?  Not for a long damn time.  And don't give me that crap about a "slow build," this movie goes from zero (in the first hour) to 100 in the last 20 minutes or so, and there's no build at all, it's just nothing...nothing...nothing...nothing...yawn...zzz...OOGA BOOGA!  There are a few things here and there that indicate a ghostly presence, and there's plenty of time for these idiots to leave the damn house before anything bad happens to them, but they just hang around being stupid, so it's hard to feel sorry for them when things finally start to happen, and then the movie tries to do a bunch of things it doesn't have the budget for, and it just winds up looking silly.  There's a really cool shot near the end with a grainy image of a clown face (John Wayne Gacy famously dressed as a clown to lure little boys) and this image creeped me out because clowns are freaky, but other than that, nothing happens here that isn't done better in other movies.