Haunter (R)

By the time the closing credits in “Haunter” role, you’ll have a migraine as though you’d just spent two hours grueling over an advanced trigonometry exam – written in French. What the 2013 Canadian horror film does well is perfectly embody the role of a frightened teenager played superbly by Abigail Breslin as she deals with the terrors of a haunted house. What director Vincenzo Natali fails to do, along with writer Brian King, is to create a horror story that can match up with her talents. 

“Haunter” opens as an eerily freaky horror movie with great potential. The story is confined to the Johnson house, where daughter Lisa (Breslin) is dismayed that every day for a week has repeated exactly as the before. Interactions with her parents (Michelle Nolden and Peter Outerbridge) and little brother Robbie, are verbatim to the point where she openly mocks what will be said in advance. Compounding the tension is that Lisa is the only one of the Johnson clan to be aware that something is amiss.

While practicing a haunting melody on her clarinet, Lisa hears the same tune faintly playing from elsewhere in the house and begins to investigate the source. Subtleties like the lull of the clarinet and ominous voices coming through the heating vents show that Natali has what it takes when he tries, and it keeps the first part of the movie at a chilling degree.

Set in the mid 1980s, regular everyday household objects assist in the overall scares of the story as well. The cacophonous ring of a rotary phone, the static filled playback of an old VCR, a crackling walkie talkie toy – items that were common play in 1985 are inadvertent relics of fear as we watch in the present. Nothing is more frightening than the piercing shrill of a ringing phone to break a tomb like silence of a room.

The entire movie revolves around Abigail Breslin who is just too cute in the lead role of Lisa. Breslin is the epitome of a free thinking teen who doesn’t shy away from danger, but still manages to capture the essence of a helpless and timid teenage girl. Bresin’s career began at the age of 6 when she appeared in the M. Night Shyamalin thriller “Signs.” Since then she has received high praise for roles in “Little Miss Sunshine” and “My Sister’s Keeper” among others. At just 18, it will be fun to watch as Breslin blossoms into a Hollywood starlet.

Michelle Nolden and Peter Outerbridge are tasked with almost robotic roles as they play the Johnson parents – stuck in a never ending loop and completely aloof to the situation. Both stars have familiar faces, though you may not be able to recognize just what roles you know them from. Both are solid in their efforts.

While filled with early heart stopping and macabre moments, and a particularly spooky stop-motion type scene near the end, the problem with “Haunter” is its lack of focus and direction. At the onset, the story itself appears well written and bursting with creativity. But by the end, its as if writer Brian King entered himself and his script into a creative maze that he was unable to find his way out of. Rather than simplify things, King continued to add more twists and turns, and the end result is a movie that does have some scares, but also a lot of confusion.

In the end, “Haunter” is worth watching for the performance of Abigail Breslin alone. She perfectly portrays a character that is the ire of all horror movie leads. The rest of the film is just below average, and by the end you’ll be asking yourself just what the hell is it that’s going on.

by – Matt Christopher