8213: Gacy House (2010)
Reviewed by The Foywonder
Starring: N/A
Directed by N/A
8213: Gacy House is the latest found footage film from The Asylum following last year’s tediously dreadful mockbuster Paranormal Entity. This time they went all out to try and convince viewers that what we are watching is honest-to-goodness raw footage found at the scene of a crime. No listing of cast or crew; nothing on the disc besides the movie and an 8-minute fake documentary spotlighting the victims seen in the feature-length fake documentary and how this footage finally got released to the public. The back of the DVD case boasts two different disclaimers proclaiming this to be legit police footage found next to their bodies, going so far as to outright state in no uncertain terms that “This is not a hoax”.
According to the movie, the footage we are watching was filmed on March 6, 2006. According to the date in the movie’s trailer (included as part of the mini-doc DVD extra), this footage was shot on March 23, 2006. According to wording on both the front and back of the DVD case, this footage was shot on May 15, 2004. They go all-out to convince viewers this is 100% for real and then have that big a continuity error… Or was this just an in-joke?
There are even two critical blurbs on the back of the case declaring the film “SHOCKING!” and “UNBELIEVABLE!” Those quotes are not attributed to anyone. They must have been found quotes.
A half-dozen-person crew consisting of ghost hunters, a criminal psychologist, and a psychic entered the then abandoned house built atop the foundation where notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s home once stood. Their plan was to conduct a séance in hopes of encountering the spirit of the executed mass murderer to be used as footage for their wannabe “Ghost Trackers” television series. All were found dead the next morning. Only this controversial found footage finally edited and released to general public years later of what went on that night exists as evidence of their fatal encounter with the supernatural that night.
While a vast improvement over Paranormal Entity, thanks largely to a decent cast doing their darndest to make this thing feel credible even though over half the film plays like b-roll footage the editors of “Ghost Hunters” would leave on the cutting room floor, there is just no getting around the prolonged stretches where nothing really is happening. Too much walking around and loitering about with cameras, mostly encountering little more than the infrequent strange noise or flickering lights or phantom touch, until the last ten minutes when Gacy’s spirit finally does some ghost hunting of his own. No matter how hard they tried, none of it spooked me. It would be very easy for me to hate on 8213: Gacy House. However, I simply cannot hate on this movie, and I’ll give you eight good reasons why.
1) For the nanosecond you actually see John Wayne Gacy’s ghost at the very end, he is clearly wearing clown make-up. Yes, the ghost of serial killer John Wayne Gacy has been summoned back from hell and does so in his infamous ‘Pogo the Clown’ attire that he wore to children’s birthday parties back in the day.
2) The busty medium offers up her young son’s shirt at the séance to attract the spirit of John Wayne Gacy, since, as is well documented, Gacy was known to have a fondness for young boys. You suppose if they were seeking the spirit of Ted Bundy she would have offered up her teenage daughter’s thong?
3) In a house where every room has a surveillance camera in it and someone is monitoring the feed from all those cameras at any given moment, two of the ghost hunters sneak off to have sex in the bedroom.
4) Cameraman in the basement looking for a sign that Gacy’s spirit is present calls out to him with questions like, “John Wayne Gacy, are you here? Have you molested any boys in here?”
5) They find ectoplasm. Given the obsession at this point with Gacy’s sexual deviance, I am shocked nobody questioned whether it was actually Gacy’s ghost jizz.
6) The first real indication that Gacy’s entity may be present in the house is an EVP recording of a ghostly voice angrily saying, “Kiss my ass!” Not making this up. The ghost of John Wayne Gacy actually tells them to kiss his ass.
7) Gacy’s ghost attacks the busty medium, leaving a puncture wound on one of her breasts. This was clearly done as an excuse to film close-ups of her ample bosom spilling out of her bra. Gacy’s poltergeist will attack her again later on, this time ripping her top off entirely, exposing her breasts, like a scene from a horror movie remake of Zapped. But I thought Gacy’s proclivities were for the opposite sex?
8) A young guy gets elevated kicking and screaming into the air by an invisible force that then pulls down his pants and drags him still kicking and screaming into the basement, presumably to get ghost raped. I cried with laughter. I laughed so hard I had to pause the movie and rewind…several times. This was almost up there with Mega Shark biting the passenger plane out of the sky.
With just a little tweaking 8213: Gacy House could have been transformed into a sublime parody of ghost hunting television shows and found footage films.
Let me repeat; John Wayne Gacy’s invisible entity pantsed a dude in mid-air and dragged him off to get ghost raped to death! I am now convinced every last second of this footage had to have been for real because you can’t make that stuff up.
2 out of 5
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