Like, um, half a thumb up

First of all, this is a low, low budget film. A basement film. A film clearly made by a gang of enthusiastic ameteurs rather than a Hollywood production studio. The acting is basically what you'd expect from a movie starring your friends. The sets are what you might find around town, or what a relative might lend you. The camerawork, editing and cinematography, while occasionally inventive, are far from professional. Hell, even the special effects are rudimentary (when they're not flat-out laughable).

But I kinda liked it. I didn't love it, and I'm not even really recommending it, but it's definitely the most unique and troo-kvlt horror flick I've seen in quite a while. Basically, what you have is a bifurcated storyline in which two distinct threads unfold and eventually merge. In the first, a young girl struggles to understand her relationship to her spooky parents and the creepy old house she's seemingly trapped in. In the second thread, an escaped gang of teenage rehab patients finds themselves drawn into the same spooky house. Presiding over all this is the young girl's grandfather, a mysterious figure named Reverend Salo (groan).

For the most part, however, the plot of this movie is inconsequential. Horror is almost entirely senseless. Like Suspiria (which it resembles but can't begin to compete with), Horror cares more about building atmosphere and presenting disturbing visuals than about telling any kind of coherent story. While one might hazard a theory this way or that about why the events of the film unfold the way they do, it hardly matters. I listened to enough to DVD commentary to realize that director Danta Thomaselli's explanation is far less enlightening than what the average viewer might come up with on their own. "This is a movie that challenges all reality," he says. Uhhhhh, yeah.

Again, in spite of all that, I did like this movie. Its heart is in the right place, even if it doesn't have a brain in its head. The visuals are imaginative, unsettling and clearly tied to a personal sense of what horror is all about. And, at 77 minutes, it never gets a chance to wear out its welcome.

6/10 (though I get the feeling I'm being waaaaay too generous)