Haunted house movies are always entertaining to see how a group of people interact in dangerously uncharted territories. But when all there is for that group are little clues to understand the energy that bewitches the place, how long could you last with your active curiosity? The Mad Hatter hints that it could be more than the characters, but it will all depend on the viewer’s patience.

After a masquerade/sex-party goes wrong killing every guest inside a majestic mansion, years later four students are invited by their psychology professor to spend the night inside the rebuilt building to test their brains and see if anything happening inside the house is a paranormal event or a mind-trick after acknowledging the history of the premises. Unfortunately for the students, the tests that will be carried out go beyond what their minds can imagine and the fiction of an urban legend turns into a real nightmare for everyone— including the trapped souls.

The Mad Hatter may give you the impression that you’ve seen it all before because you probably have— it doesn’t stray away from previously released films like The Haunting of Hill House, The House on Haunted Hill and even Ghost Ship. What is interesting about a film like The Mad Hatter is its eeriness and unsettling feeling it houses in the viewer— but that’s pretty much all in this film as it never manages to take off. As other films manage to be savage around every corner throwing everything they think could be relevant to the plot, this one goes steady to keep itself stylish and classic without a dynamic rebound.

The staging is very vintage with a mix of steampunk-ish features and whatever Panic! At The Disco’s third album was about. The setting, including the colors used, are right on point to give it that haunted feel. All the characters have their vices and fears so marked that it is easy to understand where they come from without giving clues to their conclusions— this is excellent since it does not allow you to deduce what will happen to them at any time. You can give yourself an idea that things will not end well but it doesn’t reveal its plans in depth, for the sake of keeping it interesting.

Filled with a pretty aesthetic, an attractive premise and interesting characters, The Mad Hatter loves to repeat itself over and over again as it displays the same traumas once every 10 minutes. For some this might seem like a nice formula to understand the haunting better, but it doesn’t bother to go beyond the tragic events to give it depth into its own storyline.

4 OUT OF 10 TEETH