If you're a pair of feuding stepsisters, try getting chased about by a clown, a scarecrow, and a bald guy for a while in a funhouse. It'll help you work through your issues and realise that deep down you love each other after all. Pretty soon you'll be like "get your hands off my sister you costumed stunt man!".

As indicated by the signage of my little hole in the internet I'm a pretty committed enthusiast of the horror amusement park theme, so I watched this thing specifically because the blurb promised a Halloween spookhouse. I was all set for some of that creepy carnival vibe, like maybe there'd be a ghost train and a corn maze and some mongoloid carny hurting people with the props and gags. I even watched this on Halloween for god's sake.

Worst spookhouse ever. For one thing the entire movie happens indoors so there's virtually no amusement park atmosphere. I know it's low budget but I at least want Kevin Conway out front yelling "alive! alive! alive!" or something. This place is just dead like a museum, or to be more accurate a movie set. One of them is afraid of scarecrows, so here's a room with some hay and a scarecrow in it. Stuff like that.

I guess these movies are made for teenagers so my uptight librarian-like frowning upon their juvenile shenanigans is sort of like complaining about Mother Goose being inferior literature, but the boyfriend dumpings and girlfriend swappings and stepsister henpeckings seem particularly tacked on and obligatory here. And do you reckon the jerk guy might put on a mask and try to scare the girls for the ten billionth time in a movie? There are actually things I enjoy seeing ad nauseum, like every movie could have that kid from Phantasm III getting run over by a truck, then the truck stopping and backing over him again, but has anyone, ever, even a 14 year old, been delighted by the guy jumps out to startle everybody gag?

Teen drama and sterile amusements aside, the movie fouls out by proceeding directly to that part of every utility grade slasher in which the writers have run out of ideas and just have everybody chased about yelling each other's names until the end. Usually we at least get a few decent kill pieces before the game of horror tag starts but this movie cuts right to the chase, so the screenplay is mostly just "SAM!" "HAILEY!" "DEVON!" "COREY!" "AMBER!" "SAM!" "SAM! "SAM!".

Line: "SAM!"