Review of American Horror House

If you want a decent haunted house movie, got to the horror aisle of your local movie rental place; if you want a really bad haunted house movie lacking in logic and common sense, go to SyFy Channel. Once again, Hollywood pees in the face of the paranormal, swishes the water around and blames it on the dog. Again, what starts out as an interesting and promising premise very quickly goes down the toilet before the movie even starts. Not sure why the movie borrows its name from "An American Horror Story" on FX; the movie has nothing to do with the series. Set near the fictional East Coast college of La Roux University but filmed in Louisiana, it stars the vivaciously talented Alessandra Torresani of "Arrested Development" and "Grounded For Life" fame as an attractive busty college student whose sorority burns down, (Remember that, it's important later.) and her sorority has to move into a large familial manor house several blocks from the college owned by the virtually timeless Morgan Fairchild, who I seriously suspect has a portrait in her attic getting older for her as she stays young. Morgan plays the very mysterious and very stern landlord and housemother. However, hidden in the history of the house are some needlessly violent deaths and disappearances very conveniently lacking in human remains. The sorority is also hiding some very illegal hazing rituals that never get exposed orchestrated by the typical bitchy blonde stereotype. The scary clown hologram improbable as it is has practically stolen from the more superior movie "Hell Night," and like that movie, the body count is adequately and passably tied into the haunted house story. Torresani treats the material very seriously, and Fairchild relishes her character, virtually chewing up her scenes. The ghosts include a creepy girl with a nursery rhyme, an animated mascot costume and some characters in period costume, but they're soon joined by the murder victims at which point the movies turns into a farce of itself. The ghosts act more human than spiritual, pounding on doors and racing through the house like, well, college kids drunk on beer. Problem is, while the movie is suspenseful, it's not scary, and the script could have used a very badly needed re-write to make the overall film more believable. It's lacking in atmosphere and very little character development. In fact, the whole movie is riddled with plot holes big enough to drive a train through Sideways! The biggest plot hole is the fact that there should be umpteen bodies getting stacked up somewhere on the property, but the writers decided to get lazy and ignore resolving that problem. Truthfully, there is not much haunted house or ghostly about this movie; it's basically slasher and gore done paranormal style, and the climax ends very unsatisfactorily with a shock ending that is more of a whimper rather than a finale. Bottom line, SyFy needs to stop turning out these lousy movies and go back to airing the classic horror movies of yesterday.