A Haunted House (2013) - Review

Well this is a whole bunch of nope.

At best, the Wayans brothers drag down otherwise entertaining movies.  I have so few examples of this that I’m actually going to mention The Last Boy Scout and Bulletproof, neither of which are technically good.  At their worst, they are tremendously unfunny, spilling their seeds of embarrassment all over the screen every chance they get.  This goes for pretty much the whole Wayans clan, although Damon is by far the... least worst.

Marlon is the worst worst.  There’s just not a comedic bone in his body, evidenced by the early Scary Movie movies (of which the only tolerable one is the Zucker-helmed third installment) and especially White Chicks.  White Chicks has exactly one memorable scene.  And yes, it’s the one where Terry Crews dances to Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles”.  But considering Marlon’s other Oscar-worthy performances from greats like Dance Flick, and the Dungeons and Dragons movie... well, it’s hard to see where it all went wrong here.

Hope you find that face funny.

A Haunted House is just another parody movie, this time aping the Paranormal Activity movies mainly.  Runner Up to World’s Most Annoying Man, Nick Swardson, and the obnoxious cowboy guy from Anchorman co-star to make Wayans seem better by comparison.  It works.  But barely.

The only other thing I really have to say about it is that it seems like it was all improvised.  Say what you will about Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, etc.  They’re some of the worst movies ever put to screen, but at least it seems like they were written.  The jokes are nonsensical, go on too long, and are full of pointless references, but at least they were written a couple of days before shooting and not... DURING shooting.

Having said that, this is even slightly less watchable than the Seltzerberg parodies because you can’t even really make fun of how bad it is.  It just exists in its own bubble of awfulness, denying all legitimate criticism.  To put a dumb little cap on the review, it’s like a haunted house unto itself.  You don’t want to go in.  And if you get that nagging feeling of curiosity wondering what’s inside, tell it to go to hell.