aul Sacchetti (Andrew Sensenig) and wife Anne (Barbara Crampton), still grieving the death of their college son Bobby, move into a house in rural New England hoping to put bad memories in the past. A good deal, says Paul. Until the noises begin, fluttering takes wing, and super-spooky neighbor Dave (Monte Markham) drops by to tell his new neighbors the place was once a funeral parlor whose 19th-century owner Lassander Dagmar was found out to be selling corpses and run out of town, or at least so Dave says. That may help explain why the basement always seems hot as hellfire and an electrician sees something more than a broken boiler.
Enter friends Jacob (Dave McCabe) and May (Lisa Marie), invited up to house to take the temperature of the spirit world, whose distemper the impressionable Annie thinks might be Bobby trying to make contact. In case you wondered, there’s something very rotten stirring in the Sacchetti household, which compliant townsfolk knowingly indulge. “We don’t need to find the darkness here,” announces a startled May after taking in the energy. “It’s everywhere.” And apparently famished for fresh souls, a legitimately scary but suspense-starved concept.
If you’re a fan of haunted houses, the walking dead — make that the carbonized and white-eyed possessed — then this one’s for you. “She’s an old, old house,” says Dave, setting the house’s brutal cutlery. This is also an old, old concept, and while much-praised writer-director Ted Geohagen clearly loves horror (he sets the film in 1979, when he was 10) and enlists capable performances, little aside from persuasively glowing corpses do much to make it sparkle.
