October Scares (The Houses October Built, 2014)

Every October there are haunted houses, haunted hayrides and fairground horror nights.  But there is also a less glossy and more brutal fright experiences.  The Houses October Built follows a cast of filmmakers looking for true scares.  What we witness is how they stumble into a horrifying world full of people who have questionable sanity, who may even be homicidal.

When they first start showing up at the alternative house of horrors, they are told to leave the cameras off.  And they of course do not…which starts a series of escalating horrors as they start to find they may have opened a dangerous Pandora’s Box of evil.

This is found footage, which can be an iffy prospect, but the filmmakers use it to build suspense.  While the film takes a bit of time to build up, once the strangeness starts and goes pretty full throttle.  The story line ends up being very engaging and disturbing.  The makeup is chilling and unnerving.

The Houses October Built is a highly effective found footage film, I wish more of were in this vein.