‘Spookt’ Panic Fest 2024 Review: A Not-So-Spooky Haunted House Story
Every small town has its mysteries. The local kid who disappeared without a trace. The respected neighbor who went insane. The eerie legends and the supposed haunted house that everyone steers clear of. In his feature debut, Spookt, director Tony Reames and writer Torey Haas involve them all with a ghost story that aims for spooky fun but becomes bogged down by an incoherent plot and an all-you-can-eat buffet of tired tropes, right down to the ghost in white sheets.
Greenville, Pennsylvania has a story. A tale of a madman named Dr. Byler (Eric Roberts), who conducted strange experiments on victims in his basement before meeting his own end. The town believes his house is haunted, taking the souls of anyone who ventures inside. Wanting to disprove the haunting, YouTuber Rachel (Christen Sharice) ventures to Greenville, armed with science and skepticism. Meanwhile, amateur paranormal investigator, Claire (Haley Leary), is tasked with finding out what happened to a girl who disappeared there. Investigating the house at the same time, the two will have to work together if they have any hope of uncovering its secrets.
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One of the keys to any proper haunted house story is a setting with personality, and it’s one of the many crucial elements missing from Spookt. The exterior of the Byler house fits the mold, a decrepit abode that appears out of place in the quiet suburbs where it resides. Yet once inside, we’re met with Easter-colored walls, spick and span furniture, and a too-clean interior that looks almost brand new and feels out of place, especially when contrasted with the external appearance of the house. Of course, it isn’t a requirement that the home be falling apart, but when coupled with Reames’ struggle to create an effective atmosphere, the polished look of it all makes it that much more difficult to succumb to the intended eeriness.
Perhaps aware of this, the filmmaker attempts to throw in various ghouls outside of the main premise, whether it be a spirit that haunts an old road or a faceless doll that follows Rachel wherever she goes. It all gives a sense of how unexplained tragedies extend from the scene of the crime and creep into the bones of the town itself, but the overload of been-there-done-that ideas confuse the story rather than enhance it.
The strength of Spookt lies not in its scares, but in its two main leads and the clashing dynamic of their characters. A successful YouTuber, Rachel has built her popularity on disproving haunts with science and reason…drawing the ire of believers in the paranormal investigator community frustrated by her smug contempt for the concept of ghosts.
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Claire is just the opposite. Born in Greenville and having grown up around the legends, she has no doubt in her mind that spirits exist. Questionable coincidence brings them together in the Byler house, but their pairing makes for an engaging conflict between two women who each want to prove the other wrong.
Genuine performances from Sharice and Leary pull us in, their evolving relationship adding loads of warmth to an otherwise cold tale. Initially apart in a battle of science vs. spirituality, outsider vs. homegrown townie, Reames’ film suggests that these things can and should coexist as the pair observes one another’s methods and grows closer through the process. Scenes of the two accepting one another’s beliefs and personalities instill a surprising sweetness that radiates off the screen. Even while everything else falls apart around them, Leary and Sharice manage to do the heavy lifting and keep the thing on its feet…at least until the final moments.
While I commend Spookt for attempting to build Rachel and Claire’s relationship into something more resonant, it all comes crashing down in a frantic third act that flails around in the dark before ending abruptly. It’s as if the filmmakers arrived at the conclusion and simply had no clue where to go with it. It’s unfortunate because at the cobwebbed heart of this lackluster haunter is a relatable theme contemplating our inability to move on from death.
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Mother of the missing girl, Anne (Erin Brown), hires Claire to find the daughter she can’t go on without. Property manager Mr. Machen (Keith Brooks) wears his deceased wife’s clothes as a way to remember her. Both Rachel and Claire seek to have some understanding of what happens when we die. And then there’s Dr. Byler’s experiments. All intriguing subplots on their own that strain to connect, ultimately unable to say anything coherent on the matter of death.
Despite some intriguing character dynamics and solid performances from Leary and Sharice, Spookt is neither spooky nor all that entertaining. Rare moments such as a clever opening title sequence that recites the tale of Dr. Byler through animated chalk drawings reach for the spooky fun implied by the film’s title, but most of it falls flat in the face of poor comedic timing. The film relies too heavily on tossing as many ectoplasmic tropes at the wall as it can, hoping for some of it to stick and ending up in a mess of ghostly goop. Eric Roberts gets a fun though short-lived cameo and the ghosts look creepy enough, but the positives are far outweighed by the negatives in this otherwise derivative tale that collapses in on itself like the Poltergeist house.
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