Between Haunt and last year's horror masterpiece A Quiet Place (which they wrote together), Scott Beck and Bryan Woods have shown that their fingers are on the pulse of what makes us afraid. Their brand of tension is so anxiety inducing that it should come with a trigger warning. This time around, the duo have directed from their own script - whereas John Krasinski took the reins for last year's breakout hit - nary missing a beat and proving themselves to be effective filmmakers as well.
Set on Halloween night, Haunt follows a group of friends who, after leaving a party, decide to embark on a trip to an extreme haunted house in search of spooky holiday fun. The friends fit your standard, mostly one-note archetypes for this type of film, save for lead-character Harper (Katie Stevens) who is harboring the trauma of her past and struggling to gain control of her present, but each of the performances are solid enough that it's hardly an issue. You don't enter an extreme haunted house for deep characterization, after all. You do so to be scared. In that regard, Beck and Woods have crafted a white-knuckling funhouse that is mandatory viewing for the Halloween season.
The film-making pair kick things into high gear once the friends enter the extreme haunt, delivering one effective set piece after another, aided by the savagely creepy set designs and the cinematography by Ryan Samul. Each member of the cast is likable in their roles, allowing viewers to care just enough about the characters for the breathtaking tension of the film's first hour to carry stakes in regard to their survival when the true intentions of those working the haunt are revealed. Those first sixty minutes are as tense and frightening as any horror film you'll see in 2019.
Unfortunately, the final half hour doesn't quite meet the expectations of Haunt's masterful setup. The film devolves into a slasher of sorts, which is perfectly serviceable and fun, offering several gnarly kills and genre thrills, but the effectiveness of all that came before this shift hinged on the directing duo's willingness to take their time building adequate tension for each scare. Much of the final thirty minutes feels rushed, with character beats often falling flat and certain characters serving no real purpose to the film at all.
While these issues may derail the trajectory of Haunt's overall greatness, the good far outweighs the less-than-stellar aspects of the film. Scott Beck and Bryan Woods have gifted horror fans a strong film to add to their annual October lineup and solidified themselves as attention-demanding genre filmmakers in the process.
Score: 4/5
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