It’s Walpurgis Night and halfway to Halloween! In Germany, Walpurgis Night, (also “Walpurgisnacht” or “Hexennacht”) is the night of the witches, where they gather and celebrate the devil and all his witchy ways. People elsewhere in Europe celebrate Saint Walpurgis who repelled the effects of witchcraft, but the celebration itself is pretty Pagan (bonfires, feasts, etc.), so do with that information what you will. Here on Let’s Talk Terror, we’re reviewing a Halloweeny pick, 2019’s Haunt, where friends looking for a fun night in a haunted attraction wish they had just stayed home.
Harper and her group of friends are riding along and come across a roadside haunted attraction. Not ones to miss a fun night, they go in and are immediately put off by a “No Cellphone” rule and are asked to sign waivers — something that usually only happens with intense touch-friendly haunts. But that’s ok, because they’re not scared of a fake sense of doom. The situation becomes increasingly more deadly when the group is split up and they end up getting hurt trying to move through the maze’s rooms. One by one, the friends are stalked and killed by workers in grotesque masks, and Harper and crew must figure out how to survive and escape.
Haunt has been in my queue for over a year. I passed it up a few times, not quite in the mood for what I thought would be a cheesy bad movie. But after running out of other things to watch, I gave it a go. Now, Haunt is one of my favorites.
The plot is pretty formulaic, so much so that you’ll no-doubtedly find yourself yelling at the screen or guessing what will happen next. No worries, the payoff is definitely there! Saw-like traps and high intensity situations keep you invested throughout the flm, but the last third provides a bit of a relief from the cookie-cutter haunt-escape genre. Even before the group progresses through the maze, we are bombarded with red flags not to enter the facility; we wouldn’t have a movie if that didn’t happen though. What we didn’t expect is the gravity of the situation these haunt workers were really putting the friends into. I won’t give it away, but I will say the crew is wearing masks for a very good reason.
For a straight-forward plot, the scares were still present, which I appreciated. Even when I knew what would happen, I was entertained and on the edge of my seat. For example, there are instances when the friends must crawl through a tunnel of sorts to reach another part of the maze. We hear creepy noises and look curiously down narrow passages knowing full well what is to come; and when someone gets lost or dies before reaching the end, we cheer anyway.
It’s strange, because even though I feel like I’ve seen this movie a million times before, I still enjoyed every second of it. It comes off as a serious contender and not some money-grab (sorry Hell Fest, I still love you though!). It’s cozy and relatively quiet, reminiscent of movies like Gwen or Creep, all while still delivering a story to match the danger these friends have gotten themselves into. Haunt is a horror feel-good movie, one that I’ll no doubt be coming back to many times, and probably one to add to my list of October favorites. If you want to see a movie of a murderous haunted house without the over-exaggerated shrieking and “college 20-something” vibe, try Haunt.
What did you think of Haunt? let us know in the comments!
