In August 2012, a young, happy couple named Malcolm and Kisha move into their new home. Not long after moving in, peculiar things start to happen around the house, convincing the two that their new abode is haunted by an evil spirit. Over the course of a month, Kisha becomes possessed, and Malcolm must consult the help of a priest, a psychic, and a duo of ghost hunters if he hopes to ever have any semblance of an ordinary life, and if he ever wants to see his girlfriend returned to normal.
I knew this was eventually going to happen. No, I don't mean watching another modern parody/satire film, but watching this specific flick from back in January. I tried my best to avoid it, but a nightly perusing through Netflix helped me find out this one had made its way into most homes for the viewing, whether they wanted it to or not. I will give director Michael Tiddes' major motion picture debut credit for one thing: it is above and beyond anything put out by the likes of Seltzer and Friedberg. Then again, that's like saying that the days-old Chinese food you got from the buffet didn't end up giving you diarrhea until only three days later.
Speaking of those two hacks mentioned above, they also happened to be two of the six writers of the first entry in the Scary Movie franchise, which co-starred actor Marlon Wayans. Wayans is the lead actor this time around, and like that film, co-wrote the script here. As most of us have come to discover, a lone Wayans brother is a sad, sad creature. True, he did end up giving us a great performance in Requiem For A Dream, but there is a clear difference between Darren Aronofsky and the man who directed an episode of the Fred television series. But let's get into the quality of A Haunted House before I forget, which may be easier to do than I imagined. The first five minutes are the right kind of stupid, based around a gag with overreacting to a dead dog. Wayans' character isn't exactly likable, but he does deliver nearly ninety percent of the best jokes, or at least what constitutes as jokes in this release (the other ten percent belonging to a sadly underused J.B. Smoove). Unfortunately, the ratio of bad jokes to good jokes is a bit on the horrifying side.
I'm shocked that Wayans himself would be so lazy as to make poor imitations of characters from the franchise he was previously a star in and hope that nobody would notice. Nearly everybody feels like the RC Cola equivalent of a Scary Movie character (one character in particular looks like Milton from Office Space if he had liposuction, but acts eerily similar to "Doofy" from that franchise's first entry). I don't recall seeing Essence Atkins in anything prior to this, but good lord did they want her to be Regina Hall. I'm honestly shocked they didn't name her "Brenda" or anything that rhymes with it. And then there's the supporting cast. I could individually dissect everybody's wasted talents here, but that idea went flying out of the window when Nick Swardson walked into the movie. His portrayal of a homosexual psychic is offensively bad, and while I hate to bash a man who seemed like a rather fun fellow based on his appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, this is further cementing my opinion that this man just isn't funny in any film he's cast in. I get way too much of a Rob Schneider-meets-Pauly Shore vibe every time he comes on screen, except he's arguably worse than both of those two when it comes to choosing projects.
If the best your parody can offer is outdated and tired fart, race, and gay jokes, maybe it'd be for the best that you don't bother going forward with the project. Other films like Edgar Wright's "Cornetto Trilogy," Walk Hard, and even the previous vulgar efforts from sibling Keenan Ivory Wayans are vastly superior to this borefest, as are the classic films from Mel Brooks and The Naked Gun movies. True, it didn't bore or enrage me nearly as much as Paranormal Activity or The Devil Inside, the two films mostly parodied here did, but making the choice for the lesser of two evils still means you're choosing evil.
And besides, surely there are better, superior, and more intelligently-written parodies of Paranormal Activity out there, right?
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Right?
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