#180 -- Mr. Halloween (2007)

Rating: 2.5 / 5
Director: Andrew Wolf

By looking at the cover of this movie, you're probably going to think, "Hey! That looks interesting." But don't let the cover fool you. It ropes you in with images typical for Halloween-based horror movies, images they hope will evoke terror and entice you to watch. It's about the crazy guy in the neighborhood, known as Mr. Halloween, who opens a kickass haunted house every year. But Mr. Halloween is creepy, and rumors circulate that  he uses real body parts for his exhibits. It turns out to be true, of course. He uses real people for his fake guillotine, and real body parts for the props around the house. Teenagers disappear from all over the neighborhood, but a seemingly incompetent police force fails to realize what's going on. When a couple of the neighborhood kids, Jack and Jill (groan) decide to investigate, things get sticky for them. There's also another kid Mr. Halloween couldn't use one year, so he kept him in the basement to use for the next Halloween. Jill ends up chained in the basement with Michael, and they've got to figure out a way to escape with their lives. After being trapped down there for a year, though, Michael seems to get out pretty easily. It makes me wonder why he hadn't gotten away already. In the beginning, we see kids throwing rocks at a red-light, and one of them says, "If you hit the red, he comes for you." That's just because [spoiler alert] the sheriff is actually the mind behind Mr. Halloween's actions. He's tired of all the asshole kids disrespecting the police force, so he enlists Mr. Halloween to get rid of them for him.

"We must execute them!"

So, it sounds pretty interesting on paper, and it is. But the movie is only semi-good. I almost liked it, but not quite. There were some problems I had with the characters, especially Michael pre-hostage. At one point, his friend wanted him to come over to watch a movie, but he said his mom wouldn't let him, and he was very adamant about it. So then the friend asked him to walk down the  street and check out the haunted house that supposedly housed real dead bodies. Michael wasn't at all worried about what his mom would say about that. He was totally chicken shit once they got there, too. But I guess spending a year chained up in a psycho's basement gave him a little balls. Despite the fact that it was sloppy, it really wasn't all bad.

Like I said, I almost liked it. It was one of those movies that I wanted to like, but it didn't quite let me. Oh, and let's go back to the cover of the movie. That clown looks pretty awesome, right? And the fact that it looks like he's after a very small girl looks pretty frightening, huh? Well, there wasn't a clown at all in this movie. Not once. And no little children, either. Mr. Halloween did wear a mask when he was guiding the kids through his haunted house, but it was far from being a clown mask. I'm actually not sure what the hell it was. And the kids that he kidnapped were all in high school. So like I said, it tries to rope you in with images it think will intrigue you--but don't be fooled! Don't expect any awesome killer clowns, because you're not going to find any. What you will find is a stupid man killing teenagers for shits and giggles. And he doesn't even do it any sort of interesting fashion. I love the idea of a real-life haunted house like that, but it failed to be as interesting as I would hope. And the whole guillotine thing got old really fast. So director Alex Wolf took an interesting and promising premise, and completely shattered it with lack of creativity. It's a shame, really. You can watch this movie, or you can pass on it. You won't really care either way.