MOVIE REVIEW: A Haunted House (2013)

In the wake of the 2023 Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes, I believe I have a good understanding of what’s going on in Tinseltown. Actors, writers, and all people involved in the production of TV shows and movies want to be paid fairly and compensated fairly for their work and residual usage of the recorded production. And I’m all for that. However, I’m beginning to think there are limits to what and when an industry professional can participate in a production — namely, they might have to do some work within a specific time frame from their last credited work to keep their union or guild credentials. Sometimes the actors and writers participate in a production when it isn’t ready or complete, for any number of reasons — usually money they get paid before anyone sees the production.
One would hope these entertainment products would be made by all hands with care or coherence, but they can’t all work out the way one would want; some are low-budget productions that still limp to the finish line and make a so-bad-it’s-good showing, while some had $200 million spent on them and can’t be called trash for fear of disrespecting trash. And some are made this way because of Hollywood gatekeeping: the establishment stopping some new up-and-comer for one reason or another.
One of those up-and-comers was legendary multi-talent Keenan Ivory Wayans of FOX’s “In Living Color” fame. He had nearly his whole talented family on his 90's-era comedy sketch show (sister Kim and his brothers — Damon, Shawn, and Marlon — as well as family friend Leroy “DJ Twist” Casey). When the show was handed to Jim Carrey to lead and host, Keenan kept it moving and produced a great number of films for an “urban” audience. He really hit a stride with the Scary Movie franchise, but again it was handed off to people who never understood what Keenan was doing: they aped what they thought the movies were about, to diminishing returns over its five films and several other low-quality parody film adaptations in the early 2000s (that may or may not star a Wayans family member).
The fame of the Scary Movie franchise persisted, allowing the money to flow to the Wayans clan so they could live comfortably and produce their own works in light of residual payment structures for productions unchanging since the turn of the 21st Century. There was a problem with how these productions were made: some of the Wayans family saw how easy it was for White and White-adjacent people to get movies made, then followed the same path and said, “If they can do it, why should we have to work twice as hard to do the same?” I get it; we all want to be treated equally, but sometimes aspirant questioners need not stoop to the level of the compared because it’s designed to be easier for that specific set of compared people. But stoop the aspirants did, giving us a horrible horror film parody in 2013’s A Haunted House.

Marlon Wayans’ character banging a stuffed animal as he twists it into a pretzel was the lowest common denominator of comedy throughout the film, but it may have been necessary to reach the least sophisticated members of the audience.

Channeling the found-footage style of 1999’s The Blair Witch Project and the Paranormal Activity franchise, a collection of found footage from an exhibitionist named Malcolm (Marlon Wayans, “In Living Color” [TV-Fox], Requiem for a Dream) documents the day when his girlfriend Kisha (Essence Atkins, “Half & Half” [TV-UPN], Dance Flick) moves into his house to start a new life together. Already this young woman comes with bad omens and baggage, as she accidentally runs over Malcom’s dog and thinks his Latina housekeeper Rosa (Marlene Forte, Real Women Have Curves, Star Trek [2009]) is racist against Black people; the housekeeper IS racist against Black people, but that’s not the point. Uncommonly beautiful, Kisha has her quirks such as making dead-cat-smelling farts in her sleep that lift the sheets, believing in ghosts and the supernatural, and obscuring the truth on several pertinent facts. Namely, that she sold her soul to a demon for fancy shoes AND the demon followed her to Malcolm’s house. Malcolm tries to reason it away but fails and is seen packing up his house in a moving van, but has to come back because “he can’t sell a house in this market” (referencing the fallout from the 2008 US housing crisis). And so the couple suffer an evil supernatural haunting presence… that likes sex and smokes marijuana, putting the spirit in direct conflict with Malcolm for Kisha’s attentions.

Steve (Andrew Daly), Jenny (Alanna Ubach), Kisha (Essence Atkins) and Malcolm (Marlon Wayans) try to contact the evil spirit via Ouija board. Their expressions remind me of the old Parker Brothers commercial where the actors are asking each other “Are YOU moving it?”

Several people parade through this rough time in Malcolm & Kisha’s lives in an attempt to solve their problems, and fail miserably due to their own issues:

• Father Doug (Cedric the Entertainer, “The Steve Harvey Show” [TV-the WB], The Original Kings of Comedy, Barbershop), a recently released convict who is a priest-in-training on his first solo exorcism
• Chip the Psychic (Nick Swardson, “Reno 911!” [TV-Comedy Central], Blades of Glory), a walking gay joke per the actor’s usual shtick
• Dan (David Koechner, Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy, Snakes on a Plane) and Bob (Dave Sheridan, Scary Movie, “Buzzkill” [TV-MTV]), security technicians who also moonlight as “ghost hunters” on TV
• Ray-Ray (Affion Crockett, Dance Flick, “In the Flow with Affion Crockett” [TV-Fox]), Malcolm’s hard-knocks gang-banger cousin who is deeply afraid of ghosts
• Steve (Andrew Daly, She’s Out of My League, “MADtv” [TV-Fox]) and Jenny (Alanna Ubach, Legally Blonde, “Beakman’s World”[TV-CBS]), a swinging neighbor couple trying to get a cuckolding Mandingo party started with Malcolm and Kisha; both Kisha and Jenny share the same alma mater.

THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU, DAWG: Cedric the Entertainer as Father Doug, breaking the Fourth Wall to let the audience know stuff’s about to get real.

A great deal of this movie is based around raunchy comedy, homophobia, sexism, racism and racist stereotypes — true to the Wayans formula — but perhaps my contemporary eyes see too many problems in its presentation. To clarify, this is my first time watching the film. I had a chance to watch this when it came out in 2013, but I did not because I KNEW IT WAS A WASTE OF MY TIME. We’re only here today because I thought back to that assessment and said, “ Why not give it a chance?” In hindsight, I wish I had never seen this movie. I could fall back on the lament “it’s 2 hours of my life I’ll never get back”, but instead I am reminded of what I used to say when I was in college and watched one of the horrible movies made back then:

“The craft budget alone would have been better used to pay for someone’s college education.”

CHOICE CUTS:

• This movie was shot on RED digital cameras, back when they were standard for digital film production but still worth mentioning.
• References abound as this movie pays homage (I guess?) to The Exorcist, Paranormal Activity, and other horror movies of the past 50 years.
• So many of the actors in this movie are alumni of the bad parody film craze of the early 2000s.
• Really not a fan of watching Marlon Wayans demonstrate sex acts on a stuffed animal…and be REALLY into it. This is normally the kind of stuff used to blackmail people into corrupt activities, but he put it in a feature film — should that make it funny or OK? I’ll save you the trouble: it should and does not.
• Kisha sold her soul to a demon for Louboutins, with the red bottoms that make your calves pop? It’s an incredibly dumb reason, but I understand: a good set of calves can be hard to find on many people.
• It’s so awesome to see Alanna Ubach on my TV again; she looks a LOT different and I appreciate it!
• The days before #MeToo were so different, as so many jokes about horrendous things used to be acceptable.
• In doing my research for this film, two shows from my youth — MTV’s “Buzzkill” and CBS’ “Beakman’s World” — showed up. They were the last things I expected to see on anyone’s resume in this production, and yet it put me at ease compared to the drivel found in this film.
• The flashback with Robin Thede (“A Black Lady Sketch Show” [TV HBO], “The Rundown with Robin Thede” [TV-BET]) and J.B. Smoove (Pootie Tang, Spider-Man: No Way Home) as Kisha’s abusive parents continues the pre-#MeToo comedy ethos as domestic abuse is used for comic fodder.
• Has Jenny been trying to have sex with Kisha since college?
• I watched this on Tubi, and the subtitle technicians really have a problem with the N-word. They spell it with an “-er” when it’s spoken in-film with an “a”.
• This movie was advertised with the Public Enemy track “Welcome to the Terrordome”. I’m not sure why; maybe because the word “terror” was in it.
• So I seriously thought Jamie Pressly (“My Name is Earl” [TV-NBC], Not Another Teen Movie) was in this movie. She’s actually in the sequel, 2014’s A Haunted House 2…made ONLY because A Haunted House made 30 times its budget back in the cinema “dead” month of January.