House of the Witch (2017 TV Movie) User Reviews

Nope!

[hosackl-1 · 3/10 · 2 October 2019]

Horror buff here. In a relative sense, a score of 5.2 with over 1400 votes would suggest horror gold. This movie is not horror gold. It is not a diamond in the rough. It is terrible. Not scary - at all. Terrible acting. Terrible F/X. I am not sure how this title garnered a respectable score here. Don't waste your time with this movie unless you are a cognitively challenged 13 year old girl. Believe me, this is coming from someone who judges horror on a completely separate metric, and in general I'm usually much more forgiving, score wise (any intriguing horror movie that keeps my attention and spooks me out deserves at least a 6 or 7, baseline). This movie is barely a 3.

If you want under-recognized (but NOT underrated critically) horror gold watch the remake of "the crazies." What a flick!!

So bad it's actually kinda good

[QuadeC2010 · 5/10 · 18 January 2020]

The acting, dialogue, and special effects are absolutely atrocious. The character, Taylor, might be about the most annoying character in any show, and her one-liners make me cringe. The story is dumb and makes no sense. I'm pretty sure the ending was nearly impossible. But for some strange reason I kinda liked it. It was one of those "so bad it's good" kind of films. I'd probably never watch it again, but it was kind of fun while it lasted. But don't go into this expecting any sort of quality.

Got bored

[BABSBunny24 · 3/10 · 15 October 2019]

I'm generally not very critical of these types of horror movies. I'll forgive overacting and predictable plot-lines so long as its entertaining, but I kept spacing out while watching this one. The basic premise of the movie is kinda cool imo but the writing just kinda sucked, the dialogue was cheesy, and that last scene seemed to drag on forever.

What the?

[cloften-87626 · 1/10 · 5 October 2019]

Christ almighty this was terrible. Unoriginal plot, cringe-worthy acting (I can usually tolerate mediocre acting but this was real bad), typical idiot stereotypical teenagers making idiotic choices.

I watched it all the way through just to be thorough but god do I regret that.

Whoever voted this a 10/10 I want to know what you're smoking.

Another Lame Sy-fy Channel Horror Movie Fails... Again

[knightox · 2/10 · 1 November 2019]

I saw the title of this film and kind of got my hopes up especially since I was watching it on Halloween 🎃. When I saw it was a Sy-fy Channel production I probably should have known better. No offense towards them but they aren't really known for their Oscar winning horror movies 🎥. The plot starts off simple enough with a kid named Charlie being dared to remove the address numbers off an old, supposedly haunted house by a girl. When he tries to do so he ends up being "sucked up" inside the doorway 🚪 and lost forever (Never mind the girl knew where he was, what he was doing and his bike was still there a year later!). Like I said a year later on Halloween a group of teenagers decides to spend the night in the old house because it's supposed to be haunted by a witch. Well slowly chaos ensues and the idiotic teenagers get picked off one by one by a very poor CGI ghost 👻 of the witch in very ridiculous manners. You've seen it all before in cheesy B-rated movies. The inept police finally find one body of the teenagers (who's been underwater for hours) and somehow magically (remember "magically") revive her with CPR. They then send her home with a deputy. Soon they recover another body and discover it's the same girl with her heart ripped out! "Uh-Oh!", they think. Switch scenes to the deputy's car where we find him dead 💀 and the back door to his police car 🚔 open. We see the newly possessed teenage girl (by the witch) covering herself in a gray blanket now walking down the road. And that's how this genius of a movie ends. I can't believe I watched the whole thing on Halloween 👹when there are so many better scary movies out there.

A waste of time and money.

[bobquack · 2/10 · 16 October 2017]

With a title like this, I hoped it would be another Blair Witch. It was not. The script is banal, the actors likable but characters dumb. Just another teen fright-fest that could've been so much better. Not scary at all. The CGI effects are cheap, which gives the entire film a cheap look. The house they used is not creepy at all. They certainly could have picked an older house. The first boy to disappear is never found or explained, so I was disappointed. There are a few other things at the end that weren't explained. No EMTs even though they found a couple of bodies? We've seen it all done better. Why doesn't Syfy spend a little more money on a script, a better director and go for decent acting at least.

My Fitbit thought I was asleep!

[belle_shields · 2/10 · 12 October 2019]

This film was so predictable, it was like I wrote the script. Very slow, very boring and an absolute yawn-fest. Save yourself an hour and a half and go for a walk, instead.

Skip it

[imaclellan · 2/10 · 4 October 2019]

There's no way this has a collective 5.2 rating. Horrible plot, dull acting and no scares. Hard pass.

Of Course It's Predictable

[deager · 7/10 · 19 December 2020]

It is a teen horror movie, you expect predictable! It is what they do with that predictably that counts. This one uses some imagination in the story, gives you a few good scares, tight direction and pretty decent acting from a young cast. If you start one of these and complain about it being predictable you shouldn't start it it in the first place and you have nothing to gripe about. Overall it was way ahead of 70% of those in this genre and that alone is worth a 7 in my book.

Horrible movie

[chromeemee · 1/10 · 11 October 2019]

Got through the first 35 minutes of the movie. It was so bad that I was literally rooting for the witch to just kill off all of the cast members. I'm almost positive the directors had a plot going and then gave up and started winging it.

Why the hate, people?

[K_Rad88 · 8/10 · 28 July 2021]

Has it been done before? Yes Is it a 'cliche teenagers locked in a haunted house and can't escape' film? Yes Does it deserve all these bad reviews? No!

Look yeah it's been done a million times like most films have been nowadays, but the fx aren't horrible like everyone keeps saying, the acting is fine and not as bad a MANY movies I've seen, and it wasn't a boring film at all.

I'm not sure why so many people hated it, I'm way late to the party with watching this one because I'm not usually a fan of supernatural horror (love a good slasher but not ghost stuff) but I was bored during Melbourne lockdown 5.0 and thought I'd give it a shot!

Worth a watch if you like jump scares and teenagers dying in gross ways, it's not low budget and the house is very cool.

A SyFy horror movie with a punch...

[paul_haakonsen · 6/10 · 7 August 2018]

Right, well initially I had very little expectations to this, being a SyFy movie and all. But still, I am an avid horror fan and I liked the movie's cover/poster, as it seemed interesting.

It turned out that "House of the Witch" was actually one of the better SyFy movies that I have seen in quite some time. Not only did they up their production game, which had a tremendous effect on the end result of the movie, but they also managed to put together a movie with a proper storyline and one that had good effects.

Granted, this is not the most original of stories. In fact, everything here has been seen elsewhere in other movies. So don't get your hopes up on originality. But still, it worked out well enough, because writer Neil Elman and director Alex Merkin individually managed to create something that had a good flow and harmony to it.

The characters in the movie were fairly average, albeit a bit on the generic side, in terms of how characters tend to be in movies such as these. Hardly memorable characters by any means, but the actors and actresses did good jobs with what they had to work with.

"House of the Witch" does have its moments in terms of being creepy and scary. However, it is not a movie that will scare the living daylights out of you. It is worth sitting down to watch it once, if you have the time and chance.

A big steaming pile of nothing

[addeisdead · 2/10 · 8 October 2019]

There's nothing coherent going on in this movie. Some teens sneak into an old house, and then for some reason an evil witch spends an hour scaring them with a bunch of random cliches pulled out of other horror movies before killing them one by one. There's a spider-walk sequence straight out of the famous deleted scene from the Exorcist, an escape scene copied from the end of the Descent, and a scene with a bunch of tree tentacles pulled from the Evil Dead. And all of it is directed so poorly that none of the scares land for even a second.

Especially egregious was the final scene where they chose to play audio clips of "clues" the characters gave throughout the movie over and over again, I guess to be sure they beat it into our heads what exactly happened. The clips were blatantly obvious, and I don't think most people would have needed help to figure out the ending, which was yet again another cliche.

I like horror movies, and this was easily the most pointless, random and poorly made one that I've seen in quite a while.

This movie was absolute trash!

[pooterbear1 · 1/10 · 27 October 2019]

My friends and I wasted an hour and 30 minutes watching this trash of a movie. It was dumb from the beginning, all the way to the end. The actors were terrible, and the effects couldn't even fool a child. If I could give it a 0 I would. You're better off watching CareBears, it's wayyyyy scarier than this.

these people are complete idiots.

[Calicodreamin · 3/10 · 8 October 2019]

The movie in general was pretty creepy, the effects worked fairly well, and I definitely jumped a few times. But all of this is greatly eclipsed by the complete and utter idiocy of these people. They split up on multiple occasions and are then confused as to why they can't find people, spend the whole movie wandering around the house with no clue what to do, ask people to makes phone calls after the tenth declaration that's there's no service, and in general are just stupid. The script is terrible. The storyline has no point and no flow. Just a bad movie all around.

Had hope but dashed

[africe · 2/10 · 2 October 2019]

Had hopes for this movie but sadly the stupidity factor stepped in. Why is it that all horror writers believe that everyone is an idiot? If just one horror movie could have an intelligent person in the story I would enjoy it (and rate higher).

There's no plot, I mean zero

[MovieQween-33622 · 3/10 · 3 October 2019]

It's a bunch of teens but there's no story... They go to a house. The dialogue is terrible. Skip this and watch something with a story. Special effects were like early 2000s PowerPoint level technology aka worse than bad.

Unoriginal

[Hazelsmoke · 1/10 · 8 November 2020]

The usual plot of teens going to the local haunted house, even though their parents have warned them to stay away. It all goes belly up, they get knocked off one by one in the usual grisly fashion............................etc etc...........Unoriginal story, unexceptional acting. Don't waste your time with this one.

C level garbage (or worse)

[Ripshin · 6 July 2020]

Bad script, inept direction, awful "acting," etc. This was obviously written around the location, in the hometown of the producer. The "house" isn't frightening, in the least - just a decades-old "Federal" styled mansion, next to a freeway. (The property is apparently being converted into a business, housing, and retirement complex? I found a few old articles on Google, but didn't explore further.)

How this kind of stuff makes it onto a major streaming entity, is puzzling. It was aired on a cable channel originally.

I read an interview with the producer, and it is cringe-worthy.

By the final fifteen minutes, I was laughing, and not in a "Plan 9" kind of way.

Skip it, by all means.

A Low-Budget Gem

[ljhamann · 6/10 · 24 October 2021]

I came into this movie with extremely low expectations. I initially turned it on just to have in the background while I watch YouTube. But the story quickly pulled me in and held my attention all the way to the credits.

First off, this movie is not great. The dialog is pretty poor (mostly in the first half) and some of the acting decisions felt a little awkward and took me out of the story. The computer generated effects were not good either.

However, there are a TON of positives I can give for this movie. First off, considering the budget was around four million dollars, the set design was exceptional. The abandoned estate felt real and each room had its own scary "personality" that helped increase the fear. Next, the makeup design for the gruesome death scenes was done spectacularly and looked absolutely disgusting. Finally, while the acting was not great for the first 20ish minutes, the performances in the second have caught my attention in a positive way. The actors portrayed the feeling of "no escape" to a more then believable degree, and their desperation near the end of the movie felt genuine.

Overall, for a low budget horror flick, the movie was very enjoyable to watch. While I wouldn't call this movie great, it's negatives are outdone by its positives. It is definitely worth a stream.

okay, who got paid to review 5 stars?

[fleurdeli-hn · 1/10 · 23 October 2019]

Who'd they pay to get it to say 5/10 stars on the main page? imdb, or reviewers... there's NO way that's real. after watching it and reading the other reviews on here, the studio did that somehow... no way honest reviews would lead to anything more than a 2.

Enjoyed it

[mikemacd-43825 · 8/10 · 18 October 2020]

Entertaining, not a self confessed wannabe horror director... But still...

Wait...what?

[Bincexev · 6/10 · 25 October 2020]

It's not that bad if you didn't actually spend money on it. There are some moments....simple haunted house, lower budget masterpiece. If you're bored, give it a shot.

Kill them faster, stupid witch.

[viva_emptiness · 1/10 · 6 July 2021]

Hormonal 30 year old teenagers trapped in a house with a gh-gh-gh-ghost.

CGI eggs. Masterpiece.

Atrociously amazing.

[owenkeira · 2/10 · 24 January 2021]

This film is so bad, it's almost good. The special effects, the cliché storyline, the basic 'all dead by the end' horror style; and the acting, i can't even touch upon that.