Jen Reacts: The Houses October Built I and II

Let's just jump right into it. I'm watching the first installment of The Houses October Built (2014). It is a found-footage film that centers around five friends hitting the road in a RV in search of the ultimate haunted house experience one Halloween.

The Houses October Built - Part I

The film starts with a bloodied woman being taken somewhere, then cuts to a group of Ohio-based friends who are traveling in their RV, going from haunted house to haunted house. They utilize social media to find their experiences, but it seems early on that someone is following them.

The movie is frightfully boring in the beginning, but they seem to be focused on character-building. That's all well and good, but the tension does not mount right away. It doesn't go to the lengths Blair Witch (the original - we do not mention anything made afterward...) went to with building tension quickly. I've been dragging myself through the first half, waiting for something to actually happen.

Honestly, I like the plot. I think it is pretty creative for a FFF (found-footage film).

And, right in the middle of the film, we get footage from the antagonists. They apparently like cameras and scaring people too. The group of friends falls for a plot to abduct them, and Brandy - the sole female of the group - ends up alone on a bus with the antagonists.

This is where shit feels like it is finally getting good and the filmmakers are hitting their stride. The movie clearly is not all about jump scares but about exploring what makes us - the audience - crave those kinds of scares. The more realistic, the better, right?

Interesting note: This film is the directorial debut of one of the film's stars, Bobby Roe. He went on to direct the sequel to this film and has an upcoming work called A Wicked Tale that is slated to release this year.

And, as I write this, shit gets real. One of the friends gets bludgeoned, and the others are being buried alive. Brandy is screaming from inside her casket as dirt is shoveled on top of every casket. Also, what's with Brandy getting the nasty old casket while the others get the fancy plush ones that typically cost a few grand a pop?

Oh... okay... the film just ended with a clip of a random dude they interviewed during their trek. Well, that was awkward and kind of a let-down. I get the impression this was meant to be a two-part film, but the interview seemed forced and unnecessary.

Anyway, on to the sequel...

The Houses October Built - Part II

Opening up, the police approach one of the masked fiends as he fills in a grave with dirt. The cop finds the casket is empty, and when he turns around, the fiend is gone.

Brandy is dumped in the desert, alive but alone. The credits roll, letting us know the entire original cast is back for this film. Alright, cool. But I'm already getting a different tone from this film.

Jumping ahead to a year later...

A news report shows what happened to Brandy, leaving doubt as to whether The Blue Skeleton - the underground haunt they chased in the first film - was nothing more than an extreme haunt.

The guys go to see Brandy about their promotional work for various haunted houses. Brandy has done what she can to dissociate herself from the leaked coffin footage from a year ago, as it clearly traumatized her. Brandy does not want to go, but she is now Coffin Girl. And they're getting paid. Brandy doesn't care about the money, but the guys push it with her. We all know where this is going... She'll cave. They always do. *sigh*

The guys go around reviewing haunted houses without Brandy and are told to seek out Hellbent by a Russian guy who owns a zombie-themed haunt. They then go to the Haunted Basement. Apparently, it is haunted by dudes who enjoy dressing up as little girls and a woman giving birth to an ugly doll.

Meanwhile, Brandy still refuses to go with them. She's gonna give in soon, right?

Bobby desperately tries to get Brandy to help them, even offering to have a doctor come along who specializes in fear. He also hints that Zack really needs the money.

The guys reminisce about what happened the night they were abducted. Zack relates his experience of being dragged down the alley. Meanwhile, Brandy makes the flight out with Mikey to meet up with the rest of the group in the RV.

I knew she'd cave soon!

Mikey reassures Brandy that what happened to them a year ago was just an extreme haunt group. Bobby tells Brandy about the doctor who studies fear, but Brandy is hesitant to speak with her. Bobby pushes her to do it.

They meet up with Dr. Margee Kerr (Yes, she's a real doctor! And she seems pretty darn cool.) in Philly at the actually haunted Eastern State Penitentiary, who explains that she wants to help Brandy "engage with scary things" and what she does with her clients. Brandy explains that she felt she had no free will when she was abducted and doesn't know what would've happened if the cops hadn't come out to investigate. Brandy thinks the guys don't understand what she is feeling because it became very real for her.

The group goes to 'The Halloween Capital of the World' in Anoka, Minnesota. Again, this is a real thing.

They watch a group do the "Thriller" dance before heading to Wyoming, MN. (Note: The filmmakers ditched the "'x' Days to Halloween" stamp and opted to just tell viewers where the hell the group is at. Good call.) There, they visit a haunt that buries them alive that takes them on a hayride to a haunted barn.

Suddenly, the perspective switches to the nightvision camera used by the fiends who terrorized the five friends in the first film. It is clear that they are following the friends once again.

Next, the friends get zombified make-up from a make-up artist before doing a zombie pub crawl. (Fucking pub crawls...) The film is about halfway in, and I'm just feeling 'meh' about the plot right now. Is this just a perpetual party? Bobby and Mikey puke their guts out after losing an eating contest to Takeru Kobayashi (a real-life competitive eater from Japan who, not gonna lie, is kind of hot).

And, oh, look, the group is still being followed!

Um, can we get more hot Japanese guys? I'm bored. Might start Googling hot Japanese guys. Not like that'd be an abnormal thing for me to do... I'm getting really distracted here.

What's happening? Oh, they're in Perry, GA to do some sort of zombie marathon thing. Annnnd on to the nexttttholyfuckisthatmaskedguyhitchingarideundertheRV?!

Next stop: Atlanta. They're looking for laser titties. But guess who is also there? Brandy and Jeff get separated from the group, and the masked fiend shows up. Brandy confronts the place's manager, who does not recognize the man as one of his actors. Brandy tells the others she wants to quit, but they deny having the masked guy show up. Zack tells her they have to finish as a group, but Brandy agrees on the terms she gets paid more.

The group goes to bed, but the masked stalkers show up and put some sort of smoke into the RV from the vent in the roof. They then break into the RV with their gas masks on.

At 4 PM, they wake up feeling like shit. They realize they've been driven to an abandoned location; it isn't the campground they were at when they went to sleep. They see a sign that says "Hellbent." There is a clown wearing Mikey's outfit that points them toward the building.

Night falls, and they go into Hellbent. They are filmed as they walk through, guided by supposed actors in clown masks. They're instructed to put on black hoodies and masks (oooh, how creepy). They're all drugged from behind. The four men are removed, and only Brandy is left in the room. She is then escorted out by a dude with a camera.

She finds Mikey getting tortured, his face set on fire by one of the ghouls. She then sees Bobby get bludgeoned, Zack getting his arm sawed off, and then beats her guard over the head with a glass bottle. She takes his camera and runs. She then finds Jeff hanging as the fiends flash cop car lights and sounds at her.

A door opens, and Porcelain (the doll girl) walks in with a few of her doll friends. They point her out, but Brandy is pursued and cornered. A coffin is lowered, and it is revealed the four guys were in on it. There is a gun inside, and she points it into her own mouth and pulls the trigger. Flashback... The dolls show Brandy that the four men were behind the burial in the first movie. They even show how they were to fake their own deaths in Hellbent. The doll led Brandy to the casket with a gun and fake blood, then whispered something in her ear.

Brandy sits up, showing her fake death. They had a check in the casket for her, but the dolls intervened. Blue Skull guy watches them from a ledge. The camera pans out to show this is 'Coffin Girl (Part 2)' on YouTube, as uploaded by user Blue Skull.

He then changes a "SEEK OUT HELLBENT" sign as the RV passes to read "THE BLUE SKELETON."

Afterthoughts

The sequel is a very stylized conclusion that doesn't really conclude the story. It just makes Jeff, Mikey, Zack, and Bobby look like total assholes. They'll do anything for a good scare, even going to the length of traumatizing their own friend, Brandy.

Brandy deserved a better revenge though. I wanted to really see her take them by the balls and terrify them. The ending feels rushed in some ways, but in other ways, it is well thought-out.

My problem is the pacing - with both movies. In each, the first half is incredibly dull, and the characters do not gain much traction. But the second half becomes more intriguing. You have to wait it out for the reward.

These movies aren't horror as much as they are a commentary on the genre itself. Why do we crave such terror? Why do we go to extremes? Why do we utilize social media and YouTube to popularize horror? What is so horrific about us, as human beings, that we would go to such lengths to scare our friends?

"Scare" culture is real. Just look it up on YouTube. People get attention for pulling terrifying pranks on their loved ones. For the most part, it is all in good fun. But some of them cross the border into inappropriate. And that's what the filmmakers seem to want you to think about. Which side of the line are you on? We see which sides Brandy, her friends, the dolls, and Blue Skeleton are on.

But why do the dolls intervene in the prank against Brandy? And why does Blue Skeleton still watch over everything in the end, popularizing the entire event on his YouTube channel?

As boring as the movies are in their first halves, the second halves have a payoff. As far as the fear factor goes, the movies have little in the way of gore - and it is obviously fake. But there is something mentally stimulating about these films that conjures ideas similar to what Session 9 brings up:

The scariest thing is, in fact, the living human mind.