I should have trusted my gut. As promising as his early career was, seeing the name Eric Roberts near the top of a cast list has become as much of a red flag as Tara Reid or Richard Grieco. But I was swayed by a professional "reviewer," one who must take kick-backs.
Following a prologue that owes a debt to the Amityville, NY DeFeo family, in which we see "security cam" footage of a young man slaughter his family and then himself, we are introduced to a family in the midst of losing its matriarch to cancer. Soon after, the remaining members relocate to the very house in which the prologue murders occurred, though they're not informed of its history.
Is there something evil in the house? Will it possess any of its new occupants to repeat history? I've never written spoilers before, but this flick pissed me off, so here goes: The answer to both questions above is yes. And then it's no. After watching almost the entire movie follow a by-the-numbers haunted house formula, one that's completely devoid of actual scares. There's a tacked-on ending that shows that the home's new occupants aren't a family at all, but a group of grifters who staged the "supernatural" experiences they had in the house in order to score a big payday by way of lawsuits over the failure to disclose its history. Say what?!?
It'd be one thing if, billed as a horror movie, it provided any creepy atmosphere, tension, or scares, but it doesn't, with the possible exception of the prologue, which is then never addressed/resolved. It'd be another thing if it billed itself as a drama, or crime drama, but it doesn't. The way it plays out, it really looks as if the producers watched the dumpster fire of a horror movie they had, realized it wasn't at all horrific, and decided to tack on this left-field "twist" they thought was clever, but turned the whole flick into something else entirely. So who gets grifted? The viewer, that's who. Oh, and the indigenous group that someone swindled into footing the bill for this turd.
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