Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

RELEASED TO VIDEO IN 2007 and directed by Víctor García, "Return to House on Haunted Hill" chronicles events when two factions enter the odd 'house' on the cliffside (actually an asylum) looking for a satanic idol on the very same night (!). One party consists of Ariel (Amanda Righetti) & her beau (Tom Riley) who had been kidnapped by a group of thugs looking for the priceless figurine (e.g. Erik Palladino & Calita Rainford). The other party consists of a college professor (Steven Pacey) and his student assistants (Andrew-Lee Potts & Cerina Vincent). Needless to say, all hell (literally) breaks loose. Jeffrey Combs is on hand as the house's resident mad doctor, Richard B. Vannacutt.This is a stand-alone sequel to the 1999 movie, "House on Haunted Hill," which I don't remember seeing, but I have seen the lame original 1959 film with Vincent Price. In any case, this sequel curiously adds the priceless Baphomet idol as the cause of Dr. Vannacutt's evil. It's an arbitrary plot device to get people back in the house and paves the way for subplots about suicides and gangsters, which are incongruent to the original film's simple premise (daring a group of strangers to stay in the house overnight for a million dollars). But does anyone really care about that in a direct-to-DVD stand-alone sequel? Not me. The question is: Does "Return" deliver as a competent haunted asylum flick? Palladino makes for a capable villain, the story's energetic, the asylum sets & CGI are creepily effective and there's a lot of gore. But I didn't care a wit about anyone who was threatened because the movie never took the time to establish characters for which the viewer might care. This is augmented by the fact that the bulk of the people are awfully unlikable, which destroys sympathy. There was no suspense or genuine scares. In one sequence, for instance, a man is literally drawn & quartered to bloody pieces and I busted out laughing. Also, for me, the film didn't deliver on the female front. Protagonist Righetti is decent, but comes across as a Grade-B Kate Beckinsale. Cerina Vincent is certainly one of the most voluptuously beautiful women to walk the planet, as seen in "It Waits" (2005) and "Sasquatch Mountain" (2006), but here she's painfully anorexic and in dire need of eating at McDonalds for four weeks straight. Calita Rainford is serviceable, but not enough is done with her and she doesn't last long anyway. There are a couple of fine-looking ghosts, however, in a lame wannabe-edgy lesbian sequence.The flick's just too by-the-numbers conventional, as far as modern horror goes, and evidently aimed at adolescent boys. There's no sense of artistry. If you want to see a haunted asylum film that balances conventional horror with kinetic editing & effects with an awesome sense of artistry, see 2005's "Death Tunnel" (and, no, I'm not kidding; see my review for details). THE MOVIE RUNS 79 minutes and was shot in Sofia & Burgas, Bulgaria, and Los Angeles. WRITER: Robb White. GRADE: C- (4.5/10)

The movie is very bland. Not scary, not frightening, not thrilling. It was fun to look at with very good Set design and lot of pretty naked girls to look at, but everything about the movie was obviously done as a gimmick and nothing else.The characters were not develop enough to care weather they got killed or not, and the death scenes were not cleaver enough to justify the weak characters.Possibly the only thing worth wild about the film was an interactive menu on the Blu Ray that allowed you to kind of "choose your own adventure". I'm thinking the content was just deleted scenes on an extended film version cleverly displayed to us, which is why certain plots could not be changed no matter what you select.But even this is not really worth seeing the movie over.

The remake of House on Haunted Hill was enjoyable. It had all the elements of a good horror movie, not to mention pretty good acting, especially by Rush.This sequel to that film was unnecessary and rather absurd.Spoilers below:If you saw the remake (and if you haven't, why would you be reviewing its sequel?), then you know the back-story about the asylum, which was perfect. This film just stretches for a reason to put people back in the house and then proceeds to kill them all off, except for 2...just like the original. They add a few things, like interactive ghosts (a couple of lesbians, a shirtless inmate, etc). The idea behind this was to tell more of the story about the abuses that Dr. Vannicut was guilty of. Not a bad plot element but completely different from what occurred in the first film.We do get to see a little more of the house, but it would have been cool to revisit some of the scenes from the first film (other than the entry room). It might have been creepy to see the blood-soaked medical room where Blackburn met his end, but still, the tour of the rest of the house was interesting.The first film's haunting wasn't concerned with sending a message to the living, the ghosts/entity was only concerned with consuming more souls. Additionally, the house in the first movie was alive and it was evil. In this movie, it wants to be saved from the mysterious source of that evil, which is an ancient demon relic. I felt like this completely ruined it. You want to leave some amount of mystery. I felt that Vannicut's crimes were enough to manifest the evil spirit of the house and there didn't need to be any "evil relic" that once removed would free the spirits. That's a tired trope of the horror genre and it failed in this film. The previous film got it just right.Over all, I wouldn't include this movie in a list of horror films I will never watch again, but it certainly isn't one of my favorites. If you haven't seen this yet, it is worth watching, if only for the cheap thrills; to be sure there is plenty of gore and ghosts, but don't expect anything that will blow you away.

Return to House on Haunted Hill is set in Los Angeles where glossy magazine editor Ariel Wolfe (Amanda Righetti) is informed her sister Sara has committed suicide, looking around Sara's apartment Ariel discovers Professor Richard Hammer (Steven Pacey) there who is searching for the journal of a Dr. Vannacutt (Jeffrey Combs) that Sara had & reveals the location of the lost Idol of Baphomet. Back at her house Ariel finds that her sister Sara sent her the journal in the post, thief Desmond Niles (Erik Palladino) also wants the valuable Idol in order to sell it for four million dollars & kidnaps Ariel, her boyfriend Paul (Tom Riley) & takes the journal. The journal reveals that the Idol is hidden in an old mental asylum on a hill that is supposedly haunted, Desmond takes Ariel & his team to the haunted house where the ghosts of abused & murdered patients & Dr. Vannacutt himself kill them off...This direct to video sequel to the modest yet pretty good House on Haunted Hill (1999) was directed by Victor Garcia & is short on plot & depth but as far as gory haunted house horror flicks Return to House on Haunted Hill isn't a bad effort at all. The whole set-up is rather silly with an armed team looking for a valuable Idol, they kill without a second thought so why they just just rob a bank or something, it would be far less complicated than trying to find a lost Idol which may or may not exist & the kidnapping of Ariel, the splitting up of the team & the exposition is clunky. Cut lots of wandering around dark corridors, quick flashes of ghosts & silly jump scares which to be fir are done quite well here & add the cool gore scenes & a touch of nudity the whole thing is reasonably entertaining on a basic level. With a short 80 odd minute duration Return to House on Haunted Hill at least moves at a cracking pace but at the obvious loss of plot & character depth & development as virtually every character has some connection to another but it all comes to nothing, but then if you adjust your expectations accordingly this is a fairly good haunted house flick that is nowhere near a masterpiece but is a good enough film in it's own right. Keep watching as the end credits roll as after they finish there's an extra little scene on a beach that features even more nudity. I actually brought a second hand Blu-Ray of this & it has this option of changing the events of the film by choosing certain things that happen & the box claims there are 96 possible story lines but although a novel idea I am not sure if I would have the patience to find them all out.The connections to the original House on Haunted Hill don't really go beyond the setting, the ghosts of mental patients doing nasty things to people & of course Dr. Vannacutt reappears. The real highlight of Return to House on Haunted Hill are the gore scenes, available in 'R' rated & 'Unrated' versions make sure you get the Unrated cut as it contains more gore including a man pulled into a very small hole & gets bent in two, a face is sliced off in a cool bit, someone is ripped apart, there's blood & guts, heads are bashed in, people with half their heads missing & the real highlight is when a guy has the top of his head sliced off exposing his brain before Dr. Vannacutt rips it clean out of his skull. There's some nudity too with what starts out as a threesome with some good looking girls turning nasty as two of the turn into rotting naked zombies. I did like the exploitation & gore elements of Return to House on Haunted Hill & it's a shame that more time & effort wasn't put into the treasure hunt for the Idol & the little back-stories, divided loyalties, rivalries & back stabbing that went with it. The CGI computer effects are decent & there's a good atmosphere as a lot of it takes place in a period asylum with dark dank corridors, rooms full of menacing & dangerous looking medical instrument's & the nice period exterior design of the building is cool as well.Probably shot on a decent if not exactly big budget Return to House on Haunted Hill is set in Los Angeles but was filmed in Sofia in Bulgaria. The acting is alright, I mean there's nothing great here but it's alright.Return to House on Haunted Hill is a decent little haunted house horror flick with pleasing amounts of blood, gore & nudity. This was a watchable enough film if you don't expect too much depth. The Blu-Ray has these alternate storyline feature which sounds alright if a little limited.