Recovering from the trauma of being kidnapped last Halloween by the Blue Skeleton – a group who take “extreme haunt” to another level – five friends decide they must face their fears in order to move on. Heading back out on the road to visit more haunted house attractions, signs of the Blue Skeleton start appearing again and a new terror begins.

I love haunted houses. The nervous laughter before you walk through, the anticipation as you cross the threshold, the surprise and joy when a monster catches you off-guard, the play-by-play my friends and I give as we talk about our favorite parts afterward–all these things are delightful and give me warm tingles.

The first Houses movie took a group of friends and put them on a road trip across the country to experience the scariest, most extreme haunts they could find.  They end up (spoiler alert!) getting more than they bargained for then they cross paths with the group Blue Skeleton, specializing in very extreme, very personal,  very abusive experiences.  Brandy (Brandy Schaefer) ultimately ends up buried alive and struggling to survive.

These friends certainly aren’t dumb enough to go on another trip, are they?

Yep, they sure are. Well, at first, Brandy does not go with the other guys. She stays behind, making the valid point that on their previous trip she ended up buried in the ground and wants no part of it.  They grumpily start without her, with lots of money at stake if “Coffin Girl” changes her mind and joins them again.

Long story short: she eventually does.

The movie continues much like the first Houses, with the group traveling from haunt to haunt, videotaping everything, getting scared by monsters, watching a brain-eating contest (featuring actual food competitor Takeru Kobayashi) (!!!), a zombie 5K run, and on and on. Every so often, there are creepy insert shots of Blue Skeleton members watching and videotaping the group from afar. Following them.

Getting closer. 

The final showdown at the Blue Skeleton haunt called “Hellbent” wants to be an intense, dangerous, and deadly game of cat-and-mouse, but it comes across as lackluster and kind of anti-climactic, even as guys are burned to death and arms are chainsawed off.  As the body count grows in more and more horrible ways, it just felt like the stakes were more and more diminished, and that the threats weren’t really threatening enough. Part of the problem was the reactions of the actors themselves: none of them seemed particularly upset or frightened by anything (even when Blue Skeleton sneaks into their RV at one point and renders them unconscious).

There is a double (triple?) cross of a twist ending, that puts some of my issues into perspective, but it’s not enough. By the last 15 minutes of the movie I had pretty much checked out of it, so the mental gymnastics needed to make sense of the finale were just not present in my brainpan.

I think there is a worthy and effective horror movie to still be made from the premise of an extreme haunt wherein no holds are barred, but this House, sadly, is vacant.

The Houses October Built 2 will be available on Blu-ray and DVD on January 2, 2018.