Horror House

Director - Evan Marlowe (M is for Monoxide)
Starring - Lloyd Kaufman (Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead), Kerry Finlayson (My Evil Sisters), and Lauren Lakis (Stalker)
Release Date - 2012
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "Home sweet horror. Five stories, one house of fear... Would you live here?"
Format - Streaming (Online Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

      I love a good anthology.  Hell, who doesn't?  Some of the many movies I watch while I write reviews are mostly anthologies because they have so many damn stories to tell in a short period of time.  Films like Creepshow, Creepshow 2, From A Whisper to a Scream, and the modern flicks Watch This! and V/H/S/ 2 (because the first V/H/S/ sucked ass) are some of my favorites to watch while I write.  When I started writing reviews on my blog about 5 or 6 months before I was brought on to write for Horror Society I really hated reviewing anthologies.  It was so hard and time consuming to pick apart every story the anthology offers.  Now, after writing over a year, I have found out the perfect format to review anthologies and that makes me extremely happy and that also brings me to my next review.  The film, Horror House, was actually sent to me to review by those beautiful people over at Brain Damage Films.  Thank you for the screener!
     The film follows real estate agent Joe (Kaufman) as he spins out five stories associated with a house he is trying to sell. The first story is about two sisters, one good and one bad, but are they both real?  The second story follows a cheating husband and his wife who visits a gypsy psychic.  What shows in the tarot cards actually come true.  The third story follows a man who thinks he is God's gift to woman but he is not as hot as he thinks he is...until he meets a witch who corrects that problem.  The fourth story is about a girl who lives with her single mother.  Her mother is a whore and is always bringing home random men.  She also treats her daughter like a piece a shit but one of her many Johns feels sorry for her and gives her a Japanese doll.  The young girl grows up loving her doll like it was a real person which leads to her mentally snapping and dressing up like the doll.  The fifth and final story follows a young boy who keeps reading from a book.  The story in the book scares the shit out of him but could the story and the beast it is about be real?
     I really wanted to like this movie and I especially wanted to like it even more because it had Lloyd Kaufman in it.  Sadly, the movie was not that good and that is frustrating for me because the movie had so much damn potential. It's sad when I watch a movie that has the potential to easily become an indie classic but falters somewhere between shooting and editing.  The acting varies from segment to segment but they are all decent for the most part.  The entire cast shows promise in front of the camera and I will be shocked if I do not see them in other acting endeavors.  The stories for all the tales were amazing but some were better than others.  I personally enjoyed "Hot Stuff" and "The Leapling" the most.  This is the only two stories in the entire anthology that does not need to be redone and was done perfectly the first time.  The rest of the stories show promise but something happened during filming or editing resulting in the stories that were not that entertaining.  Finally, those looking for on-screen kills will be disappointed but there film does boast some impressive special effects.  Nothing you will see in a Tom Savini flick but impressive non-the-less.  Overall, this film had the potential to be one hell of a anthology film but just falls short.  It had great stories that can easily sucker the viewer in but just lacks the heart and drive to make them memorable.