Syfy’s House of Bones is Horrible Fun

“A couple of teenagers in their parent’s basement write a few negative blogs and suddenly my hit show is tired?”

Don’t worry about this blogger, Quentin. I’ve got nothing but great things to say about Sinister Sites: House of Bones. That is, if you don’t mind being called a cheesy b-movie (cause I love cheesy b-movies!)

It all begins with a boy, a house and baseball back in the 1950′s. The ball goes into the yard of the spooky old house, the boy goes into the yard to get the ball and then that thing happens that happens in all horror movies — the front door opens for the boy and what does he do? He goes in, of course and that’s the last we see of the boy.

Haunted House Rule #1 – Never go through any door or gate that opens for you. Half the violence in this movie could have been avoided if people had followed that simple rule.

Switch to now and we’re greeted with The Ghostfacers, as in a perfect replication of the opening credit sequence of your favorite ghost hunting reality show. This one is called Sinister Sites only the ratings are dropping and the network wants the show’s star, Quentin, to do something about it. Like, stop standing in front of a rear screen projections and get your butt out into the field. Quentin reminds the man that he’s a star, he knows this because he just got offered $10,000 to appear at the Port Washington, Wisconsin comic book convention.

The first few minutes of the movie is the perfect send-up of the ghost hunting genre and from there it turned into the story of my life on any low budget set. The film crew arrives at the haunted house only to find that they don’t have a key to get in and someone has repainted the house so it’s no longer drab and gloomy. Next we meet Bub, he’s the kind of friendly newbie PA that experienced crew members hate to have on the team, causing the guys to remark that they don’t usually fire the PA until the 2nd day. . . . No need to worry fellas, Bub won’t be around long enough to get fired.

So we have cameraman Simon, and investigators Tom and Greg and Heather (Buffy’s Charisma Carpenter) a local psychic who is supposed to add some atmosphere to the shoot. They go into the house, start setting up the equipment and there we see the reality of these reality shows. Tom tells Heather that ‘s “investigated” dozens of haunted houses and he’s never once seen any sign of the paranormal. This is a TV show, smoke and mirrors and retakes to get the emotions just right.

Only this time, it’s not just a show. The house is alive and there are gooey people parts inside the walls and it’s not long before Bub becomes house chow. Thinking he’s fooling around, the guys film the show complete with requisite hushed voices every time they talk on camera.

There’s a fabulous moment where Heather starts spitting up blood as she informs the guys that there’s real evil in the house. Tom films it with a smile then asks her to do it again so they can get a second take.

From there on in, things get pretty gruesome as the house goes on the attack. An eyeball is drilled out, a cop gets impaled on a fence and a near miss with a window turns into a shard of glass down the throat.

Haunted House Rule #2 - when the haunted house opens a window – don’t lean out to see what’s going on below.

The majority of the film involves the small group trying to save each other from a violent death and they use every creepy convention from a yard full of hanging doll parts, to the radio pouring out cries for help, to cockroaches run a muck (which was the worst scene as far as special effects go).

Eventually they realize that the house needs to be fed by tossing bodies into a well and this is where I lost track of the plot. I think they were planning on poisoning the house with a body filled with cleaning fluids – or maybe they were planning on setting it on fire. Either way it resulted in Charisma helping lug around a bloody body and she must have thought she was back on Buffy!

I won’t give away the ending, in case you do get a chance to see it but I will say that I wasn’t happy with how it all turned out. Not that it was a bad ending, as horror movies go. I just wasn’t happy about who died and how!

House of Bones is not for the squeamish though overall it wasn’t any further over the line than Fringe and Supernatural get at their worst. I’d say there was more frights than gore and that’s why it suited me as I’m not a big slasher flick fan.

What I liked best about the movie was the whole ghost hunting reality show scenario. I imagine their view of how these shows go down is probably spot on. The real saving grace of the movie though is that you do come to like the characters. A lot of these b movies lose out in that area but everyone in this movie, with the exception of Quentin, is likeable and so you want to see them come out of this alive. But it is a horror movie, after all, so not everyone makes it through to the end.

In the movie, Greg makes a joke about, “Extreme Makeover: Haunted House edition” and I like that concept. I think that should be Syfy’s next original movie. The camera crew shows up with the decorator and the construction team, ready to fix up that old house for that needy family with 12 kids.

Haunted House Rule #3 – don’t poke holes in the walls, don’t rip up the floor boards. Heck, don’t even paint. Haunted houses never like it when you do that.

If you missed the movie, check Syfy.com in a week, they sometimes put the movies on their Watch Online page.

Photo: Syfy