Brandy Schaefer – Tripping Through Gateways

The first film was a found footage horror film about filmmakers exploring “extreme” Halloween Haunts. They stumble upon some scary folks and the film ended cryptically with the suggestion all were dead.

The sequel explains this away as they were saved due to people calling the police while watching a live feed. A year later, the film makers are trying to make money promoting horror haunts, but everybody wants the girl from the video feed, Brandy, to appear. But Brandy wants nothing to do with it. So, we spend a ridiculously long chunk of the film with the guys going to random funhouses and giving their reviews. They keep getting recommendations to find Hellbent.

They finally convince Brandy to join them and then it all goes freaky and twist after twist occurs. And frankly? It is annoying. The majority of the film is very boring. There is a sequence dedicated running a marathon. We get lots of random drone footage. Can we stop with the drone footage in found footage films? Please?

The constant twists towards the end gets obnoxious…and frankly ripped off the end of Nerve (which probably ripped off another film…). This was an unnecessary sequel that simply brings nothing interesting or new to the original film.

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.

Tag: Brandy Schaefer

They Built More Houses (The Houses October Built 2, 2017)

October Scares (The Houses October Built, 2014)