Though I don’t recall the first couple spoof movies Marlon Wayans had a hand in writing and acting in, Don’t Be a Menace To South Central and Scary Movie, to be great works of comedy, they were at least passable movies with a handful of laughs and a cursory understanding of the genres that they were parodying. And they were certainly worlds better than the mess of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer spoof movies they inspired. Not so with A Haunted House, the newest spoof that Wayans co-wrote and stars in, however. This is a movie so stupid, vile, and unfunny that it would look right at home sitting on a shelf next to things like Date Movie, Epic Movie, etc...
The genre that’s being lampooned this time around is the found footage horror genre, which is certainly pervasive enough to garner attention and is definitely ripe for some skewering, but calling what A Haunted House accomplishes either a lampooning or a skewering would be really generous. This film fails to provide any insight concerning what makes found footage movies like The Blair Witch Project worthy of a takedown, and it doesn’t make any observations regarding what have become the recognized staples of the found footage genre. Instead, Wayans and his collaborators merely take scenes that are loose recreations of scenes we’ve already seen in films like Paranormal Activity 3 and The Last Exorcism, and uses them as a framework in which to present a slew of bottom scraping sex, fart, and poop jokes, all without a trace of satire or smarts in sight.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that there’s anything inherently wrong with ribald humor, but like anything else it has to be presented with wit and timing to be effective. For comedy to work there has to be something in its delivery that offers up a unique point of view that the audience hasn’t considered before. The extent of A Haunted House’s point of view seems to be that sex exists, and it’s a pretty silly thing to look at when presented out of context, farts can be loud and smelly, and they come out of your butt, and pooping is even smellier than farting and even sillier to watch than someone having sex. This is the sort of movie that wants you to know how gross gay sex is, and what perverts gay people are. It’s going to clue you in on the fact that black people do things this way, and white people do things that way. In short, it’s one of the most boring, least funny chores of a film that I’ve encountered in quite some time, and you should avoid it at all costs.
