THE HOUSES OCTOBER BUILT 2 (2017)

Studio:       RLJE Films
Director:    Bobby Roe
Writer:       Zack Andrews, Bobby Roe
Producer:  Zack Andrews, Steven Schneider
Stars:     Brandy Schaefer, Zack Andrews, Mikey Roe, Bobby Roe, Jeff Larson

Review Score:

---

Summary:

Having survived their previous experience with the mysterious ‘Blue Skeleton’ group, five friends return to the road to document extreme Halloween haunts.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

A police officer interrupts a masked Blue Skeleton member in the process of burying Brandy alive. Two other men in skull masks abandon Brandy by the side of the road, leaving her with a handful of mini-DV tapes.

Footage of Brandy’s near-death encounter with Blue Skeleton goes viral. Brandy becomes known online as “Coffin Girl.” Brandy’s friends Zack, Mikey, Bobby, and Jeff are revealed to have also survived their Blue Skeleton experiences.

One Year Later – Going back on the road to document extreme haunts as a means of making money through viral marketing, Zack, Mikey, and Bobby are unable to convince Brandy to rejoin them. Despite haunt attractions specifically asking for ‘Coffin Girl’ to help with promotion, Brandy adamantly refuses to participate due to her previous trauma.

Zack, Mikey, and Bobby visit Scream Town, an apocalypse-themed escape room named Paranoia Quest, and a haunted basement in a building called Soap Factory. By the time Jeff meets up with the three men, they begin losing bookings because Brandy is not with them. After more prodding, Brandy finally agrees to participate provided they do not do any extreme haunts.

Philadelphia, PA – Brandy consults with sociologist and author Dr. Margee Kerr about the psychology of fear.

Anoka, MN – Brandy, Zack, Bobby, Mikey, and Jeff visit the “Halloween Capital of the World,” where trick-or-treating was supposedly invented.

Wyoming, MN – While at the Dead End Hayride, the group is told for a second time to seek out an extreme haunt known as ‘Hellbent.’

Minneapolis, MN – Mikey and Bobby compete against Kobayashi in a zombie brains eating contest as part of a zombie pub-crawl.

Perry, GA – After the group participates in a zombie-themed marathon, a masked Blue Skeleton member secretly stows away on the underside of their RV. The RV passes a sign whose letters spell “seek out Hellbent.”

Atlanta, GA – Inside the R-rated Chamber of Horrors redneck haunted house, Brandy and Jeff encounter a man in a Blue Skeleton skull mask. The proprietor reviews the footage and claims the masked man is not one of his employees.

Brandy chastises the other four men for presumably setting her up. With Brandy threatening to quit, Zack offers her more money in exchange for doing the Hellbent haunt with them.

That night, Blue Skeleton gasses everyone as they sleep in the RV. The quintet regains consciousness the next afternoon to find that their RV inexplicably moved all the way to the Hellbent haunt in Outer Banks, NC.

Brandy, Zack, Bobby, Mikey, and Jeff enter Hellbent at nightfall. In the abandoned building’s cellar, everyone is directed by masked attendants to don zippered sweatshirts with full hoods. The quintet is suddenly chloroformed from behind.

When Brandy recovers, a masked man leads her alone through the building. Brandy is made to watch as Mikey’s head is doused in gasoline and set on fire. Brandy next sees Bobby being waterboarded with blood before having a cinder block broken over his head. Zack’s arm is removed with a chainsaw. Brandy breaks free from her captor and finds Jeff hanged from a ceiling.

Multiple women in doll masks silently point Brandy to an escape route leading outside. Men in skull masks surround Brandy in a courtyard and present her with a small coffin. Brandy finds a gun inside, which she points at the men surrounding her. Suddenly worried, four of the men remove their masks to reveal they are Zack, Bobby, Mikey, and Jeff. The men beg Brandy to not fire. Brandy puts the gun in her mouth and pulls the trigger. Brandy collapses to the ground, seemingly dead.

Footage flashes back to moments earlier, revealing that before Brandy went outside, the woman in the porcelain doll mask led her to a room projecting footage proving the four men were setting up Brandy all along. Porcelain points to a small coffin containing a prop gun and blood packet as she whispers into Brandy’s ear.

In the present, Brandy shocks her former friends by rising from the ground. Zack and the others try explaining that their plan was to help Blue Skeleton go viral for a big payday. The group stands in shock and confusion, unsure of whom to trust.

Back in Georgia, a man in a blue skull mask rearranges the ‘seek out Hellbent’ road sign letters to spell ‘The Blue Skeleton.’

---

Review:

“Found footage” film “The Houses October Built” (review here) left such a blasé impression in 2014 that there was no enticement to re-watch it in advance of screening its 2017 sequel.  I did however reread the detailed synopsis from my review of the first movie, hoping to refresh a fuzzy memory of where things left off so I would be ready to roll at the pickup point.

SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST FILM

“The Houses October Built” was about five friends (Brandy, Zack, Bobby, Mikey, and Jeff) who tangled with a mysterious, perhaps murderous underground group known as ‘The Blue Skeleton’ while searching for the most extreme Halloween haunts in America.  According to my three-year-old notes, the movie concluded with Jeff having been murdered by masked men in an alleyway, Mike being butchered inside a haunted house room, and the remaining three friends buried alive in separate coffins underground.

Now, I don’t remember those scenes well enough to recall exactly how clear-cut the depictions of apparent death were.  Regardless, although I can get onboard with the buried alive trio potentially being rescued, my summary seems satisfied that the other two were pushing up blue baptisias when we last saw them.  So if continuity is something you care about, you’ll definitely have an Annie Wilkes “Misery” moment when “The Houses October Built 2” opens one year later with all five friends miraculously intact.

Jeff at least vaguely acknowledges some sort of confusion regarding whatever happened to him in that alleyway, though Mike’s resurrection doesn’t even earn that much of a mention.  Whatever.  “The Houses October Built 2” is far from the first horror film to jettison previous plot beats when they are inconvenient for a sequel, and it likely won’t be the last.

END FIRST FILM SPOILERS

Anyway, “The Houses October Built 2” has an almost identical single-sentence logline to its predecessor.  Five friends (Brandy, Zack, Bobby, Mikey, and Jeff), having survived their entanglement with the mysterious underground collective called ‘The Blue Skeleton,’ return to the road to seek out notable Halloween haunts across America.  The main difference is that due to the trauma suffered during their previous trek, Brandy doesn’t agree to participate until a second round of coaxing from her compatriots about 25 minutes into the movie.

Outside of that wrinkle, “The Houses October Built 2” is essentially indistinguishable from the original.  Part two basically spends 70 minutes creating a Travel Channel special exploring several real-life Halloween haunts.  It’s about as drably engaging as such programs usually are too, making for fine background noise while drying dishes in the kitchen.  Then for the 25-minute finale, The Blue Skeleton brigade finally catches up to put everyone through the paces of “is this real or still part of immersive fiction?” terror once again.

“More of the same” means opinions of the first film carry over directly to this sequel.  If you want more tiny tours of random October attractions where teens in latex masks jump out of blacklit corners to rattle amused patrons, “The Houses October Built 2” has your back.  If vicariously living a 3D experience in 2D makes little sense to you as enthralling entertainment, prepare for a second serving of dull disappointment.

People have all kinds of pet peeves when it comes to “found footage.”  Mine is that too much of it often feels like a first-person sprint through a Halloween maze, with someone huffing and puffing while ghoulish ghosts lunge at the lens shouting “boo!”  And that is literally the specific concept behind both “The Houses October Built” films.

Halloween haunt thrills are specifically crafted to work in the moment on the individual immersed.  Reflected in film form, these intimate encounters translate into passive experiences.

At least a generic jump scare in a traditional horror movie considers how camera angle, editing, and audio timing can be combined to jolt a viewer.  When a first-person camera merely records people walking through a maze, the audience only ends up watching something happening to someone else.

Filmmakers Bobby Roe and Zack Andrews seem to have garnered a fervent following among haunt enthusiasts through “The Houses October Built.”  That’s a nice niche for them, though I don’t see sustained satisfaction for broader horror audiences because haunted maze walkthroughs offer limited cinematic appeal.

Do you want to see Mikey and Bobby lose to champion hotdog chomper Kobayashi in a zombie brain-eating contest?  What about watching them violently wretch their stomach’s contents into a dumpster afterward?  There’s an illusion of being informative what with segments such as three minutes spent by Brandy discussing fear with a sociologist.  But the bottom line is that five minutes devoted to documenting a zombie-themed fun run, four more waiting for an escape room to remain unsolved, and who knows how many shots of a drone capturing crowds from overhead adds up to a lot of activity that isn’t all that entertaining to experience secondhand.

Review Score:  40

---