Spooked (Fear Itself #2)

I really, really wanted to like this movie more than I did. I really like Eric Roberts and Cynthia Watros, so I was excited to see them working together in this episode, and they give it their all, so whatever goes wrong isn't their fault. Roberts plays a cop who uses excessive force to get a suspect to tell him the location of a kidnapped boy, and the boy is found, but since the cop has a history of using excessive force, he winds up losing his job for his trouble. Fifteen years later, he's a private detective catching cheating spouses in the act. A woman (Watros) asks him to check out her husband, but since her husband suspects she knows he's cheating, she asks Roberts to use the abandoned house next door instead of the surveillance van to stakeout the house. This raised my suspicions of course, but Roberts' character is cocky and thinks he can handle anything, so he goes to the house, which is majorly creepy and haunted looking, and of course the presence there starts messing with his head.

My problems with this movie arise out of the backstory of the house and how it connects to Watros' character. I can't say why without giving away what happens in the end, but suffice it to say it's convoluted and pretty stupid, and with some extra editing the story could have made a lot more sense and been streamlined until it actually worked instead of sounding incredibly silly and making me burst out laughing when I'm supposed to be terrified. It's still worth checking out for the performances alone, but it could have been a lot better, and that bugs me.