Haunt premiered at Popcorn Frights Film Festival on August 8, 2019, and subsequently had a limited release in the United States on September 13, by Momentum Pictures. The film received positive reviews from critics and grossed $2.4 million worldwide.
Plot
On Halloween night in Carbondale, Illinois, friends Harper and Bailey get ready for a party. Harper covers up a black eye given to her by her abusive boyfriend, Sam. Harper and Bailey attend the party with their friends Angela and Mallory. The group befriends two college students, Evan and Nathan, the latter of whom flirts with Harper. Throughout the night, Harper suspects she is being stalked by a man in a devil mask.
Later that night, the group spontaneously attends a haunted house attraction. They are met by a man in a clown costume who makes them sign liability waivers and place their phones in a lockbox, to which he gives them the key. Upon entering, they are met with a scene where a witch-masked woman burns a screaming girl's face with a hot poker. They reach a maze with two paths, one marked safe the other not safe. The group then becomes divided after Nathan, Angela and Bailey take the safe route and the remaining take the not safe maze. Bailey's arm is slashed by a razor while Mallory disappears. The group reunites and panics after seeing the severity of Bailey's injury. They are then forced to witness the Witch impale Mallory in her head with the poker.
Nathan leaves to retrieve their phones and is met by a man in a ghost mask, who appears to be a concerned employee, he tells them his name is "Mitch". Bailey, Harper, Evan, and Angela retrace their steps eventually leading back to the crawlspace maze, which has a trap door in case too many people go at once. Evan goes first, then signals he's made it , next is Mitch the "concerned employee" after he's made it through he grabs a board some nails and a hammer and seals Nathan inside the crawlspace maze. Devil suddenly appears and kills Angela. While fleeing, Bailey accidentally activates the trapdoor, dropping Nathan into the house's operation rooms. Evan escapes with Mitch, who removes his mask, revealing a heavily modified face before killing Evan.
Nathan retrieves Harper's phone and texts their location to Sam before escaping the house. Harper enters an escape room that resembles a child's bedroom. She barricades herself in the room using a dresser. The room beings triggering a memory of her hiding from her abusive father. In the same room there is a puzzle to solve for Harper, she uses a compact mirror to read multiple clues that are written backwards on the wall. She has to find a certain key to open a door in the room marked "The End". After she finally retrieves the key from a creepy makeshift jack-in-the-box toy from under the bed. She has more triggering memories of her abusive father speaking to her , just as Devil forces himself into the room. Harpers memory comes to of her father coming to find her hiding from him under a bed. Flashing back and for between Harper as a young child and Harper currently. Harper then leaps up and shoves the sharp key into Devil's eye. Harper makes a run for the door, turns the key in the lovk and boom a shotgun goes off. Harper is hit but continues to crawl through to the end, at the end of the hall is a shotgun with a string on the trigger. The shotgun goes off every few seconds to the melody of a Jack-in-the-box tune. As Devil is on top of Harper choking her, she proceeds to stick her finger in the injured eye of Devil to make him stand up and proceed to get killed by the shotgun trap. Harper uses Devil's pitchfork to kill a performer in a skull mask, who is revealed to be a gagged Bailey. Sam arrives at the house but is killed by Clown.
Nathan returns to the house to save the others, but is attacked by Mitch. Harper incapacitates Zombie before helping Nathan kill Mitch. They encounter Vampire, who removes his mask, revealing an unmodified face. Vampire explains that the haunt's performers are part of an extreme body modification group that creates annual haunted house attractions to lure and kill people. Vampire offers to help, but is shot to death by Zombie. Nathan and Harper kill Witch before running to the fence, Zombie comes for them once more & Nathan prepares for a fight. Zombie shoots Nathan once in the lower left abdomen and Nathan uses the bat from his baseball player costume to knock the weapon out of Zombies hand and in a slow motion capture hits Zombie in the head with the bat, narrowly escaping. Clown burns down the attraction. At the hospital, Harper realizes that the group had filled out the liability waivers with their personal information, including their home addresses.
Some time later, Clown arrives at Harper's mother's house. He gets stuck in a trap set by Harper, who emerges with a shotgun and shoots him.
Haunt had its world premiere at Popcorn Frights Film Festival on August 8, 2019 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida[6] and its international premiere at FrightFest in London, England, on August 23, 2019.[7] The Los Angeles premiere for Haunt took place at the Grauman's Egyptian Theatre on September 7, 2019.[8] The film received a limited release on September 13, 2019, by Momentum Pictures.[9]Haunt later premiered on Shudder, where it was ranked the #1 most watched movie premiere of 2019.[10]
Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 71% based on 49 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Haunt is spooked by the spirits of its obvious influences, but still packs enough thrills and chills to satisfy horror fans up for a haunted house excursion."[11] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 69 out of 100, based on five critics, indicating "generally positive reviews".[12] Albert Nowicki included the film on his list of "best Halloween movies of all time" for Prime Movies.[13]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
