Director Report Card: Vincenzo Natali (2013)

5. Haunter

“Splice” was actually intended to be Vincenzo Natali’s follow-up to “Cube.” He wrote the script back in the nineties but had neither the effects resources nor the budgets to bring it to life back then. After filming a script that had sat on the shelf for seventeen years, Natali was eager to get to work on his next project. That’s when he was offered a story by his “Cypher” writer, Brian King. The script was called "Haunter" and was ready to go. The movie still wouldn't be done and released until 2013 – October specifically, a good time to put out a spooky ghost story – but that's the realities of indie filmmaking for you.

Lisa wakes up every day to the sound of her little brother talking to her on his walkie talkie. Every day, her mom makes macaroni and cheese for lunch and meatloaf for dinner. Every evening, she practices her clarinet, goes to bed, wakes up, and starts the same day over again. That's because Lisa is a ghost, trapped in a repeating cycle of the day right before her death. Except, one day, something is different: The voice of another girl reaches out to her. Lisa soon realizes she's communicating with another girl, in another time, about to be pulled into the same cycle. That both girls are victims of the same man, who has been enacting this curse for five decades. 

"Haunter" finds a kind of novel approach to the ghost movie premise. This is a ghost movie told from the perspective of the ghost. Like spirits frequently are said to be, Lisa repeats the actions from her life, unaware at first that she's even dead. From her perspective, it's still 1985 and her bedroom is still covered with posters for Siouxsie and the Banshee and David Bowie. One evening, she walks into her bedroom but the walls are different. There's a different girl in her bed. What we're seeing here is a classical ghost encounter but from the ghost's point-of-view. That's a neat idea. 

"Haunter" is also a movie about a curse, one that's been visiting itself on the families living in the same house since the fifties. This was the childhood home of the malevolent old man Lisa sometimes sees. Since his own death, he's been possessing the bodies of the fathers that live there and having them carry out the same mass murder: Killing themselves and their families through carbon-dioxide poisoning. The girl in 2013 Lisa is communicating with is experiencing the exact same thing Lisa did back in the eighties. The killer explains it himself as "history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes." Showing a ghostly curse like this, from the inside out, is probably the coolest idea "Haunter" has.

In fact, while watching "Haunter," I couldn't help but think a movie about the girl in the modern day, slowly realizing her family is caught up in a curse far older than her, would probably be more interesting. That's because, for most of its runtime, "Haunter" is actually a time loop movie. Lisa is very used to the loop by this point, having experienced it many times. She knows exactly what her parents are going to say and when they're going to say it. That a family meeting about Lisa supposedly stealing clothes is going to come every night at the exact same time. "Haunter" tries to mine suspense from changes slowly working their way into this repeating cycle. Such as her dad suddenly smoking a cigarette after dinner or mom deciding to read a book, instead of watching "Murder, She Wrote," before bed. Yet it's hard to mine suspense from such a repetitive story. Like Lisa, the viewer feels kind of numb to the scenario very quickly. "Haunter" wants to be the horror version of "Groundhog Day" but can't quite pull it off. 

The movie tries really hard to make its premise work. On the technical side of things, "Haunter" is very well done. The interior of Lisa's home feels appropriately lived-in and realistic. It feels like a house from the eighties, one a family has been living in for quite some time. The cinematography – from Jon Joffin, best known for his work on the "The X-Files" – is fittingly spooky. The 1980s scenes have a sickly green tint to them, implying everyone there is already dead, while the modern sequences are far brighter. Lisa rooting around in a dark crawlspace filled with bones or the impenetrable wall of fog that constantly surrounds her home make for some creepy visuals. Alex Khaskin's piano-driven score also establishes a chilly mood.

As hard as "Haunter" is working to generate a creepy atmosphere, it just can't quite get there. Notably, the movie's attempts at scaring the audience fall hopelessly flat. Natali tries to replicate the forceful, shocking scares he created in "Splice." In scenes like Lisa stumbling across the furnace where the killer burns the bodies of his victims. Yet the loud sounds and bright visuals intruding in a dark space just feel like a cheap jump scare. This is especially apparent during the climax, when the screaming, distorted face of a young girl is thrust into the camera. That's the kind of cheesy horror theatrics that I would think would be above Vincenzo Natali. Other attempts at creating creepy visuals – like apparitions moving in a jittery, silent movie style fashion or a little boy speaking with a grown man's voice – come off as goofy. No matter how hard it tries, "Haunter" just can't create a foreboding feeling. 

Perhaps the reason "Haunter" can't deliver the scares it wants to is because the mystery at its center isn't very compelling. At the film's beginning, Lisa already knows that she's dead. That her entire family are already ghosts. Wouldn't watching her realize this be more compelling? It's hard for a creepy atmosphere, of the normal being disrupted, to be created when there is no normal to begin with. While the exact mechanics of the curse are interesting, we've already figured out that Lisa was simply one in a line of victims the minute she fishes the killer's scrapbook out from under the floorboards. Similarly, too much time is focused on the idea of Lisa jumping around timelines, a heady idea that feels out-of-place in a story that is otherwise more grounded. 

Another reason “Haunter” isn't as compelling as it could've been is simply because Lisa is not an especially lovable protagonist. We never learn anything about her backstory or life. Her personality remains largely vague. Except for her gothy fashion and music, her clarinet lessons, and a sarcastic commitment to vegetarianism, we never learn much about her likes or dislikes. That she spends most of the movie in a bitchy mood, owing to being fed-up with this time loop, it's hard to like her. She doesn't even seem that fond of her little brother or parents. Abigail Breslin is totally passable in the role. She invests emotion whenever she can but fails in making her a compelling heroine. It's only in the last act, when she has to fight for her life against an intimidating villain, that Lisa seems to really hook the viewer in.

Playing the killer – whose name is eventually revealed to be Edgar Mullins but is only known as the Pale Man for most of the movie – Stephen McHattie. McHattie, Canada's Lance Henriksen, is exceptionally well-cast here. For the majority of his few scenes on-screen, McHattie just has to glare ominously and whisper creepy things. He's really good at this. In many other moments, just his voice is enough to make “Haunter” feel spooky. McHattie's already distinctive appearance is emphasized with pale make-up, which makes him even more of a foreboding presence. The film is at its best when McHattie's disturbing presence is felt and the film falters anytime he's not on-screen.

Outside of its villain, few of the film's cast members make much of an impression. Michelle Nolden gives a sleepy performance as Lisa's mom, which was likely intentional considering the role the character has to play in the story. Peter Outerbridge has a little more energy as her dad, occasionally showing a threatening poise or welcoming aura. (He also resembles McHattie a little bit, which was also surely intentional.) Peter DaCunha is also very broad and flat as Lisa's little brother, one of those movie kids that seems defined solely by ham-fisted attempts to be adorable. Very few of the family members from the modern day sequence make an impression, though Natali naturally sneaks David Hewlett into the brief role of the modern father. 

Truthfully, “Haunter” is a departure for the director. None of his other horror movies, up to this point, revolved around supernatural elements. Honestly, the element that most connects this movie to the director's earlier ones is that most of the story is set in one location. It's not too far of the leap to see Lisa's house, trapped inside time and fog, as an evolution of “Nothing's” white void or “Cube's” identical rooms. A small conversation between Lisa and her mom, in which the woman comes clean about her feelings about the events leading up to this day, recalls the element parenthood played in “Splice.” Otherwise, there's little here that has that distinctive Vincenzo Natali feeling. 

This review probably came off as a little harsher than I intended. “Haunter” isn't a bad movie, by any means. It has some intriguing ideas, a threatening villain, and enough professionalism behind its look and feel to occasionally scratch an itch for a certain kind of cinematic spookiness. Yet the movie is never as involving as it feels like it should be. It's a film whose potential feels misspent, where some intriguing concepts were put to the side and less compelling elements took center stage. Most reactions to the film seem to be similar to mine, that it just doesn't quite get there. And because the movie was released by IFC Midnight, it wasn't widely seen outside of the horror fandom and general film obsessives. By no means terrible, “Haunter” still ranks among the filmmaker's more forgettable works. [Grade: C+]