10/06/2024
Here comes another Royal Horror Movie Review! Today Billy is going to discuss his thoughts on "Harlow's Haunt"! Let's get into it!
My first impressions going into "Harlow's Haunt" is that there is an overabundance of exposition. While sometimes this helps to build a film's rapport with the viewer, I feel this goes on a little too long at points. To make a feature-length film, which is an ambitious endeavor for any indie filmmaker, requires a lot of good writing and actors with the chops to pull it off. Besides John Dugan, who was a great find for the role of Harlow Greer, the other actors don't seem to have those necessary acting chops, unfortunately. Sometimes, I found the dialogue, and I hate to use this term because I despise how it has been bastardized in recent years, a bit cringey. I feel like this film would have been better if about a half hour to forty five minutes had been axed from the final cut.
The camera work isn't bad. Not mind blowingly good, but passable for a movie of this caliber and budget. I, however, was not a fan of the fade ins and fade outs between camera cuts rather than utilizing techniques such as close ups or follow shots. Too much fading makes it feel like a made for tv movie in my opinion. Slow to start, the movie picks up in its latter half and becomes far more interesting. As the brunt of the movie was filmed at a real life spookhouse attraction in Florida, the sets are decent. The backwoodsy feel the director was going for was there.
A small nitpick, though; When the five friends enter the attraction, there is a horror band playing. As a musician, I would've liked to see this actually be filmed live or at least to have the band playing to a backing track to make their performance look more believable. (For instance, the bass player does a decent looking walk down on the fretboard that doesn't sync with the overdubbed score at all. Same with cymbal crashes, snare hits, etc.) Again, this is a small nitpick I have with a lot of low-budget movies. I always have an eye on "live" bands in any form of media. Speaking of sound, the score was appropriate for the film, albeit a little loud at times, making the dialogue difficult to hear.
I would've hoped for a little more gore or scares as the "unrated disclaimer" stated at the beginning of the film. When you see a big, fat disclaimer warning you of what you're about to see, you think, "Oh boy, I'm in for a treat." This was more of a trick than a treat as the gore was a little lackluster.
I know it seems like I've been saying a lot against this film, but I truly think that fans of low budget horror films may enjoy this, and with a bit more money behind the production and a better overall team onboard, I think the writer/director could have knocked this out of the park because the bones of a cult classic horror movie are there.
At RHM, we try as much as possible to punch up, not down, and we ourselves are not filmmakers, although we aim to be one day, and a lot of reviewers are dragging this film, but not giving adequate reasons why, so anyone from the production team reading this review, don't take it as a "bad review". Use this as reference material to continue learning and perfecting your craft. We need more creative people in the world, so keep going! Until next time, this has been a Royal Horror Review. Stay Spooky!
-BB
