In the Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki House of Fears

Time and time it’s been proven that if you dangle a movie poster involving a psychotic clown on my Netflix Instant Watch menu, I will watch it. 

House of Fears continues to support that theory.

Quick Plot: Somewhere in Africa, a man and woman find a funky monkey statue artifact amid a cave of corpses. 

It gets through customs.

Back in the states, newly united stepsisters Haily and Samantha attend a typical high school party where the trendily named Carter and Zane convince them and a make-out-happy couple to change things up by sneaking into the local funhou--er, I mean, haunted house. Once there, the doors lock them inside and guess what? The house proves to be--sit down folks--REALLY haunted.

Blame it all on a The Brady Bunch Goes to Hawaii style African tiki. Before you can say surfing accident, our pretty young heroes are being chased by bald vampires, ugly clowns, nasty scarecrows and sand. 

And that’s about all there is to say of the storyline inside House of Fears, a slick but decent little horror movie that makes good use of its naturally memorable beasties. Sure, it’s really just a simple way to throw out a few moments of  evil clown giggles and electrocution, but sometimes, that’s all a film really calls for and House of Fears delivers it without too many complications.

High Points

Hey, any film that units clowns AND scarecrows to kill pretty young people with stupid names like Zane can’t be that bad, right?

Low Points

The constant harping to call the lead actress ‘the dowdy one’ would have been even mildly more effective if actress Corri English didnt’ bare such a striking resemblance to a still-pretty Crossroads era Britney Spears

Lessons Learned

When hanging out in an actual haunted haunted house, try to avoid revealing any major life secrets that might make your inevitable death a tad more painful, such as “I’m absolutely terrified of dying by suffocation.” That will come back to you, no matter how shiny your hair may be

“I say we just go back to your house and make out” might SOUND sexy in your head, but saying it out loud will most certainly lead instead to a group date

Dates don’t generally appreciated being swapped halfway through the date

Rent/Bury/Buy

House of Fears does nothing overly special, but it does most of itself quite well for a straight-to-DVD horror film. It’s about on par with another clown-stalking-pretty-people film, Amusement, a movie that’s more than passable entertainment even if it doesn’t offer anything new to its audience. As an instant watch when your mind is working at half its level, it’s not a bad way to not think too hard.