THE BATES HAUNTING (2012)

Studio:       Phase 4 Films
Director:    Byron Turk
Writer:       JL Stremberg, Sean Skinner
Producer:  Byron Turk, Jean Louise O’Sullivan, Cosimo Mariano
Stars:     Jean Louise O’Sullivan, Zachary Fletcher, Dante Zucca, Randy Bates, Robert Haag, D’Arcy Webb, Ryan Dunn, Bam Margera

Review Score: 

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Summary:

After a girl dies during a performance at a haunted hayride, her best friend uncovers a mystery that leads to more murders at the Halloween attraction. 

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Gradyville, Pennsylvania – At The Bates Motel and Haunted Hayride, Agnes Rickover meets her boyfriend Ben O’Neil before that evening’s show. During the performance, Agnes’ best friend Lily is burned to death by fire from an oversized dragon prop.

One Year Later – After slacking off with her friend Clyde, Agnes loses her job at Goose King Pizzeria. On the drive home, she and Clyde are pulled over by Sheriff Dan Rickover, who is Agnes’ father. Dan is desperate for his daughter to put Lily’s death behind her and finally find a stable job. Agnes has a disturbing dream about Lily’s death.

Dan gets Agnes a job at the hayride. She is introduced to owners Delores and Andrew Bates and their son Junior, who is the haunted attraction’s manager. Junior shows Agnes around the farm. Agnes finds her ex-boyfriend Ben making out with another hayride actor, Hannah. She then meets a pair of performers named Wayne and Zeke. Agnes is next introduced to prop fabricator and electrician Akimbo Tonaka. Akimbo invites her to an employee bonfire that night.

Agnes brings Clyde to the bonfire. Wayne flirts with Clyde. Ben and Hannah sneak into the cornfield to have sex and they are killed by a thresher. Clyde finds Zeke covered in blood near the scene and Zeke is arrested.

On opening night, Junior and Agnes take the hayride after her shift. Agnes sees Wayne tied to a saw blade and believes that the blade is actually killing him. She exits the ride and confronts Akimbo about Wayne, whose body is now missing. Assuming she is a trespasser, Andrew confronts Agnes at gunpoint before realizing who she is.

The next day, Akimbo implies that Clyde should be a suspect in Wayne’s disappearance. Clyde tells Agnes that Oktay Urissi, the dragon operator who was jailed for Lily’s murder, was released two days earlier and could be responsible for the new deaths. They track down Oktay’s location. Oktay tells them that he was not responsible for the dragon mishap and he believes he may have been drugged. The lights go out suddenly. A gunshot is heard and Oktay is found dead at the same time that Sheriff Rickover arrives. Meanwhile, the news reports that Wayne Jacobs has been found dead in eighteen pieces. Agnes and Clyde discuss Akimbo, Zeke, and Oktay as possible suspects working with an accomplice. Clyde suggests that Agnes’ father may be involved.

While Clyde and Agnes argue at the local bar, Junior and his mother take them both as hostages. Agnes awakes in captivity and witnesses Junior slashing the throat of another victim. Clyde is placed in the guillotine set. Agnes escapes and sees Akimbo immolated at the gas station set. Junior chases Agnes around the attraction. She finds Zeke’s body before Andrew Bates confronts her. Agnes wrestles the gun away from Andrew and shoots him.

Agnes arrives at the guillotine set where Junior beheads Clyde in front of the unsuspecting hayride guests. Agnes shoots and kills Delores. Junior chases Agnes into the cornfield where she ultimately stabs him to death.

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Review:

First things first.  “The Bates Haunting” has no association whatsoever with the more familiar “Bates Motel,” Norman Bates, or anything at all related to the “Psycho” franchise.  The other important thing to know going in is that the movie was made by a cast and crew so wet behind the ears that their heads are dunked under water.

The film borrows the “Bates” in its title from a real-life Halloween attraction in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania named “The Bates Motel and Haunted Hayride.”  Operated by Randy Bates, who also appears in the film, the fortuitous last name of its owner presumably skirts any potential lawsuits regarding copyright infringement.  (Randy reportedly has a trademark on the name.)  This popular farmland haunt serves both as the story’s setting and as the shooting location for “The Bates Haunting.”

The website for the actual “Bates Motel and Haunted Hayride” boasts “amazing props, digital FX, great actors and extraordinary professional makeup” as well as “huge, detailed sets, giant monsters and more pyrotechnics than a Kiss concert.”  If only the movie were able to make this same claim without its nose growing like Pinocchio’s, then the DVD would not be relegated to a dismal fate of bargain bin obscurity.

Aspiring young actress Lily Hanson dies horribly in a fire-related mishap during a performance at the ominously named haunted hayride.  On the advisement of her father and her doctor one year later, Lily’s still devastated best friend Agnes takes a job at the same Halloween attraction.  Why a therapist and a concerned parent would both consider such an action to be therapeutic is beyond comprehension.  But that really is the least of the script’s issues.  Launching from this setup, “The Bates Haunting” becomes a slasher-themed “murder mystery” that features plenty of the former and none of the latter.

On the eve of opening day, the gruesome deaths pick up right where they left off the previous October.  As the body count rises, Agnes finds herself mired deeper in the whodunit.  And surviving the ordeal requires Agnes to discover the killer’s identity before she becomes the final victim.

Technically, it would be inaccurate to say that the majority of the inexperienced cast cannot act.  Maybe they can.  They just do not do it in this particular movie.  Between a newscaster who looks ready to burst into laughter as she delivers grim details about a body found in eighteen pieces and a father who dispenses useless insight such as, “sometimes bad things happen.  It’s a tragedy.  But it’s a part of life,” identifying the most unbearable element of “The Bates Haunting” is a tossup.

Smart money for that dishonor might be on a soundtrack ripped from a forgotten episode of Scooby-Doo.  The music features the most cartoonish synth pieces this side of Saturday morning.  And for a story fixed inside of a Halloween maze, there is not a single jolt, fright, scare, or surprise to be found.

Over lit sets.  Bizarre performances.  Random appearances from “Jackass” alums.  Anyone able to soldier through to the end of the amateurish production will have their martyrdom rewarded with an inane resolution that makes as little sense as everything else in the movie.

“The Bates Motel and Haunted Hayride” reads like a thoroughly enjoyable night of Halloween fun, and it probably is.  But the movie based around the maze does it exactly zero favors as an appealing commercial.  With so many more enjoyable Halloween and haunt themed horror movies out on the market, “The Bates Haunting” is an easy pass.  Feel sorry for the poor fans of the Pennsylvania attraction that blindly take this movie home and are then forced to give it a permanent residence buried deep in the closet.

NOTE: "The Bates Haunting" was originally titled “Welcome to the Bates Motel.”

Review Score:  20

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