Halloween 2025: Day 25

House on Haunted Hill (1999)

“Congratulations. On a scale of one to ten on the perversity meter, you just hit a seventy-three.”

Inexplicably set in a psychiatric institute rather than a house (it’s right in the name, people!) Five strangers are invited to spend the night there in exchange for a million dollars, ostensibly to celebrate Famke Janssen’s birthday. It’s actually fairly effectively creepy and somewhat entertaining (apart from Chris Kattan) up until the climax, where it devolves into bad special effects and boring twists.

Final Destination

“In death there are no accidents, no coincidences, no mishaps, and no escapes.”

A year after playing a 20-something PA pretending to be a 30-something executive who is menaced by a dark cloud of evil in House on Haunted Hill, Ali Larter portrays a high school girl who is menaced by a dark cloud of inevitability..

I guess the entertainment comes from seeing disaster loom and trying to figure out exactly what shape it will take? It’s very comedy-style pacing, with setups, fake-outs, and then the punchline is death. We’ll probably watch another.

Thir13en Ghosts

“Did I say there’s a petting zoo downstairs? No! There are ghosts downstairs, Arthur!”