Dee Rudebeck 

Haunter review – not scary enough to put the frighteners on

The ghost of a serial killer inhabits Abigail Breslin in this supernatural horror, but it's too derivative, writes Dee Rudebeck
  
  

Haunter
Eye was reminded of Amityville … Haunter Photograph: pr

Abigail Breslin takes the lead in this serviceable supernatural horror thriller as 15-year-old Lisa, the only one aware that she and her family are trapped in a monotonous Groundhog Day of missing laundry, macaroni cheese and Murder She Wrote. After realising there's a ghost in the house, or rather quite a few, she sets about solving the mystery of her family's time loop, and ends up taking on the evil spirit of a serial killer who once lived there. He is the Haunter (an unnerving Stephen McHattie), who can possess the living. But who is living and who is dead? Director Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Splice) explores some intriguing ideas but the pace lags, and the film itself becomes inhabited by the presence of The Amityville Horror, The Shining and The Others, to name a few. A good performance from Breslin keeps tension alive, but hope for a really scary and inventive fright dies screaming in the basement.

 

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