Haunter

Haunter offers a freaky, visceral experience — without a hint of gore.

Once Haunter's story snaps into focus, and its creators pull you towards its inevitable conclusion, the film's flaws become that much more apparent.

The premise is provoking and well-conceived, confidently moving things forward until the increasingly knotty rules of the film’s universe eventually come to overbear the experience a bit in the homestretch.

Lifted by the sepulchral Stephen McHattie as Lisa’s nemesis, the film’s frazzled thought experiment becomes an adequate yarn.

After performing many narrative backflips in an attempt to lucidly resolve things, Haunter eventually settles for half-baked uplift that renders much of what came before ridiculous and nonsensical.

This awful rehash, badly directed by Vincenzo Natali (Splice), reeks of stale, recycled ideas.

Has an elegance roughly on par with a Goosebumps novel, refusing to follow its own contradictory rules and barely sustaining a pretense of internal logic.

Lisa is a girl who is experiencing the same day over & over again, literally. Her parents are useless; her mother cooks & cleans, her father is trying to fix the car all the time & her little brother plays video games & also plays with his imaginary friend, looks familiar "imaginary friend". In fact, this movie is anything but familiar, it is one of the most twisted horror movies I have ever seen, Abigail Breslin pulls it off again with a noticeable performance, the cinematography is unique in style & the visuals are more than just enough for such independent movie. Is it perfect? No, but near. If you are going into the movie expecting some familiar haunted house horror movie to pass time this is not the perfect movie for you, you have to connect the dots & figure things out for yourself.

The movie attempts to create a twisted story full of mystery, dread, and despair, telling the narrative of Lisa, a dead girl that finally realizes she is dead thanks to a ton of events connected to her and other girls that perished in the same way. She then has a race with her own killer, while trying to warn the still alive girl who lives in the same house as her. The story just doesn't work. It gets boring really fast thanks to how slowly Lisa realises what everything means and how she can put an end to her suffering. Everytime she makes an action that serves as a relievement to her situation, it means almost nothing, and the cycle repeat for at least fifteen times in the movie. This gets old really fast, and at the end, the viewer is already asking for the credits. Most of the characters are just weak. There are a couple of jumpscares here or there and nothing else. Some of the scenes were laughable, and it was really hard not to get distracted by the editing, like the scene with the sunglasses. It's not entirely trash though. The limbo concept is nice, but it's not strong enough to shine on its own. The contrast between the old, modern and "future" was somewhat interesting to see, but unfortunately that didn't receive enough focus. A movie with an ok concept, but done wrong.

Found it rather boring, and there was not a single moment during the entire 100 minutes where I felt anything close to a speck of fear much less terror. The premise had potential: every terror film from the ghosts' point of view but the execution leaves much to be desired. Truthfully, what a bore.