Nov 18, 2016

House of Purgatory – 2016 – extreme haunted house




I’m a bit surprised that I haven’t seen a flick like this before. It’s been some years since I first heard about the McKamey Manor, a horror place so extreme that you have to sign a waiver to even be accepted to enter. It’s a place so extreme it’s said that no one ever finished it. Everything is allowed, except causing permanent injuries. At least major injuries I would think. But I really don’t know since I haven’t read the waiver…

As I see it, this trend of extreme haunted houses is the basis of this movie. Because I believe that it is a trend. If one starts such an extreme attraction other are sure to follow – and to explore the boundaries even further. The concept here is the argument if there’s really such a place, a place so horrible that no one ever finished it, or if it’s actually an urban legend. The two debaters hit the road to find or not to find the rumored place. Of course they find it!




If they choose to enter, and finish the attraction, they will get the admission fee back. However, since its Halloween, there is no fee… seems kind of strange. Anyway, the gang of four is told that the rumor is in fact false. The goal is not to enter the house and reach the top to get rewarded. They will actually start at the top and move themselves downwards. Four or five levels down. That’s a major basement don’t you think?

Soon they’re exposed to some vanilla scares which, to be honest, gets worst after a while. It starts to get to a couple of them. Typically the women, I guess we cannot escape the non-equality of the sexes. But I feel that women generally are better screamers anyway so… Come to think of it. I was expecting pretty poor acting in this production but I was nicely surprised to see that they are quite good! I believe in the emotions they’re showing on screen. Very nice!





As they descend down the levels there’s a question if this is actually a supernatural house or not. Are they really going down to hell or is the house so perfectly set up that it’ll only seem that way? Well, I believe we get the answer to that later on.

My personal thought about this is that it’s quite a nice horror flick. I like it! I liked the first half better than the last but it’s still way better than I expected. It doesn’t seem to really connect every piece of the puzzle along the way and I wished for a more complex ending, but you can’t have everything. It’s not a very long movie. About 75 minutes and I guess that’s fine. We don’t really need a longer story to get the point made. No one escapes purgatory!

6/10

Tommy Snöberg Söderberg


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