by Jesse Miller, MoreHorror.com
Behold Monte Cristo – apparently Australia’s most haunted household and with its violent and grim history that stains it’s very walls, could you really blame it if it was haunted?
Author Phillip Muirhouse (Ian P.F McDonald) certainly wouldn’t blame it – in fact, he’s stopping by the place overnight to shoot a documentary on the hauntings to accompany his latest book on haunted areas and as you accompany him for the journey, you’ll find out just how haunted this household really is.
Muirhouse moves at a slow pace, letting the audience know the world, the history of the house, the characters and so forth.
Save for the actual horrific history of the house, there’s a lot of story here for you to chew on, as character development is thin and all you need to know is that guy investigates house. Strange things occur.
The film has it’s heart in the right place, as like The Haunting before it, it’s focused more on the suggestions and allusions to the things that go bump in the night, rather than the in-your-face shock treatment we are used to in most modern horror films.
However, while it has it’s heart in its right place – that is to say, taking the psychological horror approach – the key ingredient this film is missing is an understanding of horror.
Anyone can grab a camera, head to an old decrepit house and shout at thin air and so forth but there has to be something a little more imaginative and creative there at work to cook up some frights and unique encounters and it’s these kind of elements that are missing from this film.
I will say there are a few moments here or there that are quite effective and genuinely eerie but mostly and unfortunately, there’s also a lot of dull and uninspired material that just doesn’t work at being effective.
On the other hand, there is some solid camera work here that wonderfully captures this big old eerie house and the location around it and there are some effective moments where the camera lingers on, say, an old tape recorder as you’re listening to an unnerving EVP.
You sit there waiting for a jump but you’re not sure when or if it’s coming and this all works to put you on edge.
The cast all do splendidly, save for a few stilted lines here or there that come off feeling more forced than naturalistic, but for the most part, this is a one man show as Ian P.F McDonald’s character reacts to the house coming alive around him and I think McDonald does his absolute best with the material on offer.
Look, I am actually pretty gutted to write that Muirhouse falls short of delivering the horror because it’s got all the pieces in place, it wants to do the psychological horror aspect, which I adore, and it has so much potential but it just misses the mark because it fails to deliver enough effective and memorable scares.