“Let’s get scared.”

Drake’s rating: Needed more deranged bunny

Drake’s review: The Blair Witch Project really opened a can of worms, didn’t it? It was a movie shot on the cheap, utilizing unknown actors and birthing the whole “found footage” style of low-budget filmmaking. These elements worked in its favor, as the filmmakers were canny in their use of a nascent internet to make what could have been a little-seen indy flick into a multimedia Goliath that had a worldwide gross of nearly $250 million. And of course every would-be director took note, and within a few years the rental shelves were packed with found footage horror films looking to cash in on some of that Blair Witch magic.

None of them had the level of success that The Blair Witch Project had, of course. That film was the very definition of “lightning in a bottle” and was as much a cultural event as a movie. Nonetheless, found footage films were here to stay, thanks to the advent of inexpensive digital cameras, the relatively low cost of the shooting format and scores of young actors and inexperienced directors hoping to make a mark. And overall that’s a good thing.

But Sturgeon’s Law* applies to found footage flicks as much as it does to everything else, and so you sometimes have to wade through a lot of drek to find a gem. Which do we have here? Well, let’s find out!

In The Houses October Built we find five friends on the search for the ultimate Halloween attraction. Most of them have done the theme parks and the haunted houses, and now they’re looking for the next level of holiday scares. We’re quickly introduced to Zack, Brandy and Mikey. And also Bobby and Jeff, but Bobby works the camera and Jeff drives so they’re relegated to being secondary characters fairly quickly.

Packing up the RV, they grab the camera and head out into rural Texas to seek out chills and thrills. If you’re a horror fan, you can certainly relate: We all like to be, if not truly frightened, then at least spooked a bit. And so they hit the open road and find haunted houses, zombie paintball and a Halloween-themed strip club, since the movie really wants to earn its R rating.

They’re also menaced by antagonistic clowns and a six-foot tall blood-stained bunny wielding an axe, and I’m now wondering why the entire movie wasn’t built around that character.

Along the way Zack catches wind of the Blue Skeleton, a mysterious horror attraction that moves to a new location every year. This year it’s in Louisiana and so the five leave Texas for the Bayou State, intent on finding the ultimate extreme haunt. And of course, they find more than they bargained for.

Now from the beginning of the film, you know things are going to go badly for our protagonists, as it opens with Brandy being put into the trunk of a car. A trunk which conveniently has a camera inside, since you can’t find footage that doesn’t exist. The end of the film loops back around and we find out what happened to our intrepid quintet in a series of fairly confusing first-person POV shots. The found footage format is the conceit, of course, but I couldn’t help feeling that The Houses October Built would have worked much better in a standard movie format. Which would likely have been too expensive to do, thus ending the project before it even got started, and that would have been a bummer.

So I can’t be too hard on this movie. At the very least it tries to make the most of its format, rather than just relying on the found footage gimmick, which had grown stale even by 2014, to entirely carry the movie. Yes, Paranormal Activity, I am looking at you.

I’ll cautiously put The Houses October Built on the gem side of the found footage column**, even if it is a rough one. The characters are a decent lot, the film moves along fairly well and we get a peek at some pretty nifty real-life haunted attractions. I will say that Bobby really needs a steadicam stabilizer for his camera, though. Hopefully he made enough on this film to buy one for the sequel.

*”Ninety percent of everything is crap.” Theodore Sturgeon obviously foresaw the rise of social media.

**No, I know. Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but it’s a found footage movie! Just being above-average with that gimmick is an impressive feat.

Intermission!

• The Feaster Bunny! Seriously, that’s the moneymaker, guys.
• Mikey in bright pink underwear is not something I expected to see.
• Look, If I glance out of the RV window and find it surrounded by clowns, I’m hitting the gas and never looking back.
• “Ask for Giggles at the D&D Bar.” That sounds like bad advice.
• Leaving the camera unattended in the shady dive bar is a hilariously bad idea. Leaving Brandy alone in the shady dive bar is borderline criminal.
• What’s with the blue light bar? It looks like a Jedi got lost and wandered into the movie.