October Horror Challenge 2017 #14: "The Axe Murders of Villisca"

I've been waiting to see this movie for awhile now. It's exactly the kind of movie that I usually discover during this challenge and really love: low budget horror, got bad ratings from a lot of viewers, Netflix recommends it to me because they know I'll probably like it. One of my friends who is also doing the challenge posted about watching this movie earlier, and that reminded me that I wanted to see it, so here I go. We're going on an adventure!

The movie is about a group of high schoolers who decide to visit a house famous for some brutal murders that occurred there back in 1912. The kids are going to make a video documenting what happens during their time in the house, hoping to post the video online and maybe go viral. Funtimes.  Of course, we the wise viewers know that it will NOT be funtimes, because something evil lives in the house, and when they tromp around poking it with a stick, the evil will attack.

The acting isn't bad. The guy who leads them on a tour of the murder house is a little over the top at first, but that's how he's supposed to be, and as the movie goes on he reverts to a regular guy just trying to survive the horror. The teens are believable enough for this kind of movie. The girl seems smarter than the guys. They do this kind of thing all the time, the guy do, visiting supposedly haunted places, so they don't notice as much as she does, because she's newer to this kind of thing. The house is pretty creepy looking too, so it adds a spooky atmosphere. And since the characters are looking for creepy things to happen, it makes sense why they don't just nope the fuck out of there once scary things start happening. Plus the girl wants them to like her, wants to make friends and wants to fit in, so it makes sense that she would play along with their ideas even if she had a bad feeling about things. I dunno, I appreciate it when a movie at least tries to put some effort into character development. If I have to watch a hundred if these damn things, I don't think it's too much to ask that they put some offort into being halfway decent.

Of course there's not much here to surprise the halfway knowledgeable viewer, since we've all seen this kind of thing a million times, but the movie was still pretty enjoyable for me.