This Gory New Slasher Movie Will Have Viewers Covering Their Eyes (2024)

When people go through haunted house attractions during the Halloween season, many of them don't who the person is behind the fake gore and zombie makeup. The seasonal actor disappears behind the blood-curdling screams and smoke machine to create a visceral near-death experience that pumps out adrenaline. In Haunt Season, director and writer Jake Jarvi peels back the make-up to shine a light on haunted house actors in an actual death experience.

Haunt Season is a love letter to the actors struggling to make their big break in the entertainment industry, and provides a realistically hard perspective to achieve Jarvi's vision. Recent college graduate Matilda (Sarah Elizabeth) joins a haunted house just when another actor has suddenly ghosted her fellow crew during the height of the Halloween season. As the group of former theater kids and art-house devotees welcome Matilda into the fold, a masked serial killer picks them off one by one. As a low-budget indie horror film, Haunt Season is a commendable passion project that does its best with what it's given. But drawing back the curtain, there are storytelling and production elements holding this ambitious film back from true greatness.

Haunt Season Has the Charm of a Low-Budget Indie

The Movie Keeps Things Grounded and Practical

There are a lot of fantastic horror movies on the independent side of the film industry in 2024. From Longlegs to Cuckoo, smaller filmmakers are taking advantage of their chance to show off their creative magic. What sets Haunt Season apart from the rest is that it was really built from the ground up. Haunt Season was originally funded on wefunder.com by investors, raising a budget of nearly $107,000 when it was previously titled Spook House. The majority of Haunt Season was filmed on-location at Realm of Terror Haunted House, which actor and producer Stephen Kristof founded in the Chicago area. Filming on-location is Haunt Season's biggest blessing, as doing so provided a maze for classic slasher chase sequences and a colorful ambiance to light naturally flat environments. Jarvi also features establishing shots coupled by a serene score in the suburban setting as a break from the violence.

Judging a low-budget project such as Haunt Season isn't easy. There are elements to the production that obviously won't be up to par as a small but still studio-backed film like Longlegs. The film's visuals aren't going to be of the highest quality, and the sound design won't be perfect. Haunt Season is nothing without its gnarly practical effects and gushing blood. The SFX make-up was achieved by Stevie Calbrese, featured on SYFY's Face Off Season 9, who simultaneously achieves the best of both worlds. The effects look slightly cheap and fake, but still realistic enough for the immersion, esepcially given the haunted house experience's context. When it comes time for the serial killer to make their mark, Haunt Season suddenly becomes the goriest movie of the year. There are some kills that are absolutely disgusting to watch, so much so that viewers will be covering their eyes but peaking out of a twisted curiosity.

Related

From Terrifier to Skinamarink, Low-Budget Movies Are Changing Horror

Even in a genre like horror with many subcategories and aesthetics, franchise fatigue is real. Here's why the future of scary films is low-budget.

But what is easy is setting aside these technical snags to recognize the labor of love that went into completing Haunt Season. The story is brought to life by people who have lived through their characters' experiences, without being chased by a serial killer, of course. Most of the actors aren't going to be names people recognize -- apart from YouTubers Rob Scallon and Craig Benzine -- but their commitment to this small film drives the story in a personal direction. The lead, Sarah Elizabeth, makes her feature debut as a woman with the most ear-screeching scream as an actor. She also has the most exhausted appearance when she exits the attraction. Elizabeth embodies Matilda's desperate ambition and survival instincts perfectly, which emphasizes her disappointment in failing to make her big break. It's not hard to see Matilda's motivations being fueled by Elizabeth's own experiences.

Haunt Season Is the Wrong Type of Movie

The Movie Works Best as a Drama, Not a Slasher

The slasher is the most recognizable horror subgenre, and its overused tropes have made it harder to revisit over the years. Slasher movies always have a protagonist chased by a masked killer/s, and the unmasking of said killer/s is always designed to be a plot twist. There's very little anyone can do to innovate the slasher, let alone deconstruct it. Haunt Season doesn't avoid or subvert this tired formula, but there is a silver lining to its predictable story. After all, a serial killer set loose in a haunted house leads to messy miscommunication, and deaths that aren't as easily avoidable as people think they would be. When actors are so dedicated to their craft and the SFX make-up is notoriously realistic, the killer has an easy outing to satiate their thirst for blood while hiding right under their victims' noses.

Where Haunt Season fails is not recognizing the best parts of its story. It's a frustrating narrative to watch the movie when it's cleanly split into two different storylines: one where Matilda learns more about the actors while figuring out her own career path, and another where the serial killer is going on a killing spree in the attraction. There's no invisible string tying the two together until the final 10 to 15 minutes. And given the movie's short runtime of just 81 minutes, this leaves the film to wander aimlessly before the two storylines converge and make sense. Too much time is spent in awkward conversations between actors who don't seem to be in agreement with the tone of the scene, or Matilda walking around a house party asking about people's follower counts on Instagram. The hard-hitting exposition fleshes out the characters, but it's done so anomalously that the movie drags. When Haunt Season cuts back to the actual slashing that a slasher movie thrives on, it's an entirely different movie that has nothing to do with Matilda's plight.

Haunt Season is supposed to be a horror movie, and it's not really one until the final act.

Related

10 Greatest Slasher Horror Movies From the 2000s

Slasher films are a staple of the horror genre and movies like Scream 3 and When a Stranger Calls helped to define the 2000s.

Matilda's lack of personal stakes or connection with the serial killer and the overall crew of actors is Haunt Season's biggest undoing. She's a fish out of water that's deliberately ignorant of the deaths happening around her, but it's hard to root for her because she's not the antagonist's primary victim. Female protagonists of horror films are most compelling when they're motivated by a personal reason to rise from the ashes and defeat their enemy. They have something to prove to their adversaries, and seeing them win in either minor or major victories rewards moments to cheer.

That said, Matilda has no motivation to survive because she doesn't know she needs to. Her motivation lies with her dedication to acting, and that's where the disconnect comes into play. Hypothetically, if Jarvi had written Haunt Season as a drama that just so happened to be set during Halloween, and was wholly engaged with Matilda's acting endeavors, the movie would've been more appealing. The slasher aspects are basically baggage latched onto Matilda's story of opening her world to different types of actors and their backgrounds. The industry is hard to break into, and Haunt Season smartly doesn't sugarcoat it. But Haunt Season is supposed to be a horror movie, and it's not really one until the final act.

Haunt Season’s Appetizing Concept Requires Fine-Tuning

The Movie Has a Good Message, but Doesn’t Know How to Deliver It

This Gory New Slasher Movie Will Have Viewers Covering Their Eyes (3)

The blurry line between reality and committed method acting is on full display throughout Haunt Season. Whether intentional or not, the film's subtext criticizes the extremist method actors who use their 15 minutes of fame to make a permanent mark on the industry, but at everyone else's expense. At the same time, Haunt Season doesn't shy away from how hard it is for actors who don't have nepotism pushing them through the door. The ensemble group of characters is diverse and flashy compared to Matilda's "everyday girl" look, showing how people reduce their personalities to a brand for just a small opportunity.

Similarly, when their identity is finally revealed, the serial killer also has a trademark that they want to live up to. The killer's reasoning behind the murders isn't entirely clear by the end, leaving open a lot of questions. Their obsession with the symbolic murders mirrors the radical side of acting, but the irksome part of their identity's revelation is the characters' lack of time to process it. By chance, if Haunt Season had shown some restraints on drawn-out conversations and scenes that filled no purpose to the story, then there would've been more space to look deeper into the killer's psychology and make their unmasking more impactful than it was.

Related

10 Dark Movies With A Good Message

Films can be dark without much reason other than that's just how the story is told; other times, they can be dark but contain a message.

Haunt Season admirably tries to say something meaningful about the pursuit of acting that terrorizes its victims, but the slasher element obscures these good intentions. The commentary can be heavy-handed at times when it talks about the objectification of female actors, rather than just letting the scene show the exploitation itself. Haunt Season doesn't quite work as a horror and drama film combined. The neglect to weave both stories into a smooth narrative is draining and frustrating. At any rate, Haunt Season overcomes its limitations with solid acting, brisk cinematography tricks and gut-churning kills that make it an entertainingly gory watch, but little else.

Haunt Season premieres in a limited theatrical run on October 4, and will be available to rent or purchase on October 8.

This Gory New Slasher Movie Will Have Viewers Covering Their Eyes (5)

6

10

Haunt Season (2024)

Not Rated

Horror

Comedy

Thriller

A masked maniac targets cast members at a suburban Halloween haunt attraction, turning their staged injuries into gruesome real-life horrors. As the terror escalates, the lines between performance and reality blur.

Director
Jake Jarvi

Release Date
October 4, 2024

Cast
Rob Scallon , Craig Benzine , Sarah Elizabeth , Stephen Kristof , Adam Hinkle , Janet Jurado , Tyra Renee , Cydney Moody , Jeremy Warner , Katelin Stack

Writers
Jake Jarvi

Runtime
81 Minutes
Main Genre
Horror

Character(s)
Josh , Seth , Matilda , Bradford , Danny , V , Mika , Celeste

Pros

  • The on-set location and special effects catapult the realism of the story.
  • Haunt Season has a compelling message about the hustle culture of acting.

Cons

  • There are too many drawn-out scenes that require trimming down.
  • The protagonist's lack of connection to the serial killer loses any personal stake.
  • The character-driven story doesn't always work as a horror film.
This Gory New Slasher Movie Will Have Viewers Covering Their Eyes (2024)
Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Melvina Ondricka

Last Updated:

Views: 5281

Rating: 4.8 / 5 (68 voted)

Reviews: 91% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Melvina Ondricka

Birthday: 2000-12-23

Address: Suite 382 139 Shaniqua Locks, Paulaborough, UT 90498

Phone: +636383657021

Job: Dynamic Government Specialist

Hobby: Kite flying, Watching movies, Knitting, Model building, Reading, Wood carving, Paintball

Introduction: My name is Melvina Ondricka, I am a helpful, fancy, friendly, innocent, outstanding, courageous, thoughtful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.