A Haunted House: "Bitch! There Is A Ghost In The House. Deuces"

Director: Michael Tiddes
Writer:    Marlon Wayans
               Rick Alvarez
Starring: Marlon Wayans
               Essence Atkins
               Cedric the Entertainer
               Nick Swardson
               David Koechner
               Dave Sheridan
               Alanna Ubach 
               Marlene Forte
Rating:    ***

Release Date: 2013

It has been a really nice break that the film industry has given us from those many film parody movies; you know the ones that stopped being funny after Scary Movie 2 and soon became stale and not even really movie parodies. Well 2013 is the year for all of them to come screeching back to us; and with Scary Movie 5 being released in April, we are being treated to A Haunted House to warm us up before then (made by the team behind the first two Scary Movie's).

Essence Atkins & Marlon Wayans

Malcolm and Keisha (Wayans & Atkins) are a young couple who have made the decision to take the next step; they're moving in with each other. Despite the odd touch of nerves and the accidental killing of Malcolm's dog, all goes well; that is until a wicked spirit decides to show up and turn the couples life upside down. Basically what we have here is a parody of the recent attack of found-footage horror films (Paranormal Activity, The Devil Inside), and a parody that sometimes gets it right, but quite often gets it wrong.

In the past 10 years we have had 2 good spoofs and then about 50 awful ones; they kept churning them out and each one got progressively worse. So I was hoping that after a break we would receive a fresh and genuinely funny film, and some aspects we did. It's full of your normal slap-stick gags, some work and most don't, but what this film had that past spoofs didn't was the fact that it was a genuine spoof of the films and not just of pop culture. It was full of sly digs and almost shot-for-shot scenes, just they were funny rather than scary. It was this that I appreciated about the film, it was a proper parody. The cast were OK, but nothing special really happened with them, so not much can be said; all in all it was actually a fairly good parody film; go in not expecting too much and you'll enjoy it.

A Haunted House - Red-Band Trailer