Picture

Vacant House (2008)

Thriller/Horror     Not Rated

Plot

John and Kathy Burns have finally move from their cramped apartment to a spacious new home. They are delighted, though somewhat mystified, as to why the purchase price is so low. Despite their research and numerous inspections, there are no obvious flaws that they can find with the house. Their “moving day” happens to fall on Halloween, and unpacking is interrupted when six of their friends show up to “christen” the new house. In tow is “Floyd”, a “medium” who has been hired to entertain everyone by conducting a “séance”. The séance begins as a joke, but ends with guests revealing painful memories of their past. Later that evening, John and Kathy are awakened by a noise, and are shocked to discover that they apparently share their home with a ghost. Floyd is summoned to their home, and a private séance reveals in a dream that the ghost is the spirit of a murdered woman, who may be buried somewhere on the property. After an exhausting search, inside and outside, the body of the dead woman is found. She is given a proper burial, and her spirit is released from the house.

Acting

Its a character heavy slow moving movie that require good acting, and the 2 leads are OK for the most part, but really needed to be much better. The supporting characters are not as good as the leads, but no one was really terrible.

Gore

None

Sex/Nudity

None

Final Thoughts

SLOW would best describe this movie too perfection. There is about 45 minutes worth of back story before we are even introduced to the main haunted house storyline, then after about 30 minutes of that its ends rather quickly and randomly. The back story of all this characters and there past sins got a boring after a while, as there was way to much of it, and we really didn't need to know much about anyone outside of the leads. I do like however that most all of the characters seemed like actual people that most viewers could relate to in one way or another. The story itself is very generic and provides nothing new, but it keeps it basic, and doesn't use a lot of unneeded  twists and turns to confuse viewers. In total, it's an average movie, that provides nothing great, yet fails to be offensive in any way, and features some decent actors and characters to make it worth watching.

Overall Rating

C