Rent A Haunting at Cypress Creek (2014)

Spoilers follow ... - A Haunting at Cypress Creek review by NP

Four wide-eyed girls bid farewell to their parents as they embark on a trip together, promising to be good. As soon as their parents are out of sight however, rock music hi-jacks the soundtrack, off come most of the clothes, their walk turns to a swagger: instant transformation! They’re not such good girls after all.

They have names, but that’s all that separates them. This important character-establishing time is taken with sardonic asides and pouting. When a lot of attention is devoted to ramifications of the inevitable ‘I have to go pee’ line, you know development is hardly at the forefront of the minds of those who filled their time writing this.

Technically, the blurring and cutting off of voices and soundtrack are so glaring, they appear to be an artistic decision. In no time at all, their stay at a cabin in the woods has become a series of grunts, modulated and looped shrieks, incomprehensible and occasionally creepy images and repeated scenes, often too dark to make out. The girls, in their tiny shorts, react and become more entwined with the growing evil.

This is nearly an interesting exercise in nightmare – in the kind of delirious, unnerving crash-chaos and gory hellish manner as practiced by ‘Evil Dead (1981)’ or ‘The Grudge (2002)’. Although the tumbling into spiralling horror is frightening in its turgid confusion, and indeed tries to emulate effects on moments from the afore-mentioned films, sadly, it succeeds mainly in testing the patience.

I think the problem – and I do salute director and writer Michael and Gerald Crum for attempting an ongoing fevered nightmare that defies structure – is that there is no middle ground. One minute, we are in the bland land of badly-defined sexualised teen-girls rebelling – the next, and with no preparation, we are given all-encompassing noises and images and incoherence only to be found in the depth of nightmare. What characters there were become garbled mannequins, their unfathomable plight only scattered with occasional meaningless dialogue. The ending, when it comes, happens mid-sentence. Perhaps a little less trying to be weird and a little more help for the audience to know what it is supposed to be afraid of would help ‘Cypress Lake’ communicate the scares it batters us over the head with, with more success.

Dreadful haunting - A Haunting at Cypress Creek review by ns

Don't write many reviews but this film was so awful I felt it my obligation to warn people.

Acting is beyond wooden, still and hammy - it's just plain amateur. Even the film itself is as if it has been bought from a car boot and then copied.

TO be honest we didn't watch all the film, about 15 minutes to be precise, but that's 15 minutes we'll never get back.

Even the bargain bin is to good for this pile.

Haunting is simply Creaky.... - A Haunting at Cypress Creek review by porky

OMG....This is BAD with a capitol B ......

Picture a Fat Guy and his Teenage daughter make a Home Made Horror Movie with her 3 Best friends in their Holiday Cabin....Trying So Hard to be EVIL DEAD with a sample of The Ring thrown in for good measure .

But Imagine this Home made Movie Evil Dead filmed on an Out of Focus Camera held by the Family Dog ,then you have an idea How Bad This Really Is.... I couldnt watch it all, I speed watched it on FF just incase it got any better ...But it didnt .

Give this one a miss. it was Rotten Rotten Rotten ....