Michael Ledo This is a 2012 recycled made for TV film called "American Horror House." The film opens with a Lizzie Borden scene and then the house changes ownership to a sorority house that has no secrets from the viewer. New pledges are hazed as a party happens on Halloween night with the ghost slashers of the house. That's about it.Four girls in bras/panties. No sex, nudity or swearing. Relatively kid safe. One for the girls on a sleep over. Plenty of blood.

aesgaard41 If you want a decent haunted house movie, got to the horror aisle of your local movie rental place; if you want a really bad haunted house movie lacking in logic and common sense, go to SyFy Channel. Once again, Hollywood pees in the face of the paranormal, swishes the water around and blames it on the dog. Again, what starts out as an interesting and promising premise very quickly goes down the toilet before the movie even starts. Not sure why the movie borrows its name from "An American Horror Story" on FX; the movie has nothing to do with the series. Set near the fictional East Coast college of La Roux University but filmed in Louisiana, it stars the vivaciously talented Alessandra Torresani of "Arrested Development" and "Grounded For Life" fame as an attractive busty college student whose sorority burns down, (Remember that, it's important later.) and her sorority has to move into a large familial manor house several blocks from the college owned by the virtually timeless Morgan Fairchild, who I seriously suspect has a portrait in her attic getting older for her as she stays young. Morgan plays the very mysterious and very stern landlord and housemother. However, hidden in the history of the house are some needlessly violent deaths and disappearances very conveniently lacking in human remains. The sorority is also hiding some very illegal hazing rituals that never get exposed orchestrated by the typical bitchy blonde stereotype. The scary clown hologram improbable as it is has practically stolen from the more superior movie "Hell Night," and like that movie, the body count is adequately and passably tied into the haunted house story. Torresani treats the material very seriously, and Fairchild relishes her character, virtually chewing up her scenes. The ghosts include a creepy girl with a nursery rhyme, an animated mascot costume and some characters in period costume, but they're soon joined by the murder victims at which point the movies turns into a farce of itself. The ghosts act more human than spiritual, pounding on doors and racing through the house like, well, college kids drunk on beer. Problem is, while the movie is suspenseful, it's not scary, and the script could have used a very badly needed re-write to make the overall film more believable. It's lacking in atmosphere and very little character development. In fact, the whole movie is riddled with plot holes big enough to drive a train through Sideways! The biggest plot hole is the fact that there should be umpteen bodies getting stacked up somewhere on the property, but the writers decided to get lazy and ignore resolving that problem. Truthfully, there is not much haunted house or ghostly about this movie; it's basically slasher and gore done paranormal style, and the climax ends very unsatisfactorily with a shock ending that is more of a whimper rather than a finale. Bottom line, SyFy needs to stop turning out these lousy movies and go back to airing the classic horror movies of yesterday.

GL84 Attempting to pledge a new sorority during a Halloween party, the new pledges find the event used as a recruiting session by the ghostly house-mother suffering under a malicious curse to possess the house and must find a way to stop it from going through.This one here was actually quite an entertaining and exceptionally fun entry. The main element of the many pluses that comes up here is the fact that this one uses a near-continuous amount of ghost action which keeps this one moving along at such a brisk pace and never really lets it up. The early ghost shots of the girl haunting the cellist in the practice room and appearing to the rejected pledge are pretty chilling scenes and definitely set up some creepy atmosphere when mixed with the actions of the cop investigating the disappearances inside the sorority to the girls going through the initiation ceremonies at the same time. These manifestations of the ghosts are more than enough to provide a dark atmosphere here that's based off the haunting encounters being quite fun while also giving this one some solid supernatural basis. This makes the shots of the ghosts possessing the different artifacts and chasing them for great moments here featuring the attack on the group in the attic where the bear costume continues the attack, the final ghost ambush on the detective and the different visions of the past tragedies from the child's murders to the original deaths of the different figures in the house's history really gather up into formidable and enjoyable scenes. Finally, the main segments where they go around and invade the party, whether through ghostly temptation or simply appearing solely to those aware of their presence but remaining to the other party guests, is incredibly fun and definitely lives up to it's spectacle showpiece by setting the turning and corrupting in motion as well as providing this with the thrilling and action of the chases along the house where it finally gives them the key to overcome them. When mixed together with the rather gory deaths that are thankfully not CGI but actual prosthetics, there's a lot to like here. These here are enough to hold off the few small problems with this, starting with the lame point here involving the cursed-to-remain storyline which certainly doesn't need to be there and is introduced so late as to be an afterthought. There's the usual bad CGI, but overall this one wasn't nearly atrocious and remained quite enjoyable.Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Language, Brief Nudity and drug use.

Michael_Elliott American Horror House (2012) ** (out of 4) Daria (Alessandra Torresani) is trying to get into a frat house but she soon realizes that the house's owner (Morgan Fairchild) is hiding some dark secrets. Not only are there ghosts haunting the house but there's also a psycho going around killing teens. American HORROR HOUSE might be the first ghost-slasher and for the most part it's mildly entertaining as long as you don't come in expecting some sort of greatness like THE SHINING. I thought the special effects are what really stood out and it's pretty funny to see how much gore and violence can get onto TV these days. It's just funny thinking that the SyFy channel is started to show gorier movies on prime time television than what fans were getting in theaters back in the 80s (when they were also being cut down by the MPAA). There are quite a few memorable death scenes here ranging from one poor slob who gets his tongue ripped out to the highlight scene involving a saw. I'm not going to spoil how the saw effect works but it was quite clever and funny. The performances are about what you'd expect from a movie like this but Torresani was nice in the lead and it was certainly funny seeing Fairchild appear in a film like this. Storywise this thing really isn't too hard to figure out but the material is good enough for a TV movie.