This is one of those stories I’ve heard so many times, I feel like I’ve seen the movie already. Although I haven’t. It was a weird deja vu watching something and then being like, “I’ve seen this scene of mopping up blood before.”

The premise is fairly well known among anyone who has ever watched a ghost hunter show or read about The Amityville Horror or The Conjuring. The story is similar. A family moves into a house that is WAY too cheap for the square footage. Then they find out why it was so cheap. In this case, it was due to a mortuary in the basement that doubled as a lab for a crazy scientist who dabbled in necromancy. Like Casper‘s dad, right? That movie would have probably been a lot darker if we asked more questions about the uncles….

Anyways, back to this jump-scare fest. It’s the late 1980s, and a teenage boy with cancer has to travel to a hospital in Connecticut for experimental treatment. The long travel and financial burden is causing extreme stress in an already fractured family (aren’t they always fractured?). So the mother decides to move her and her son, along with her other son and two nieces, to a cheap house she decided to rent without talking to anyone. Well, ACTUALLY, she did talk to someone: the landlord. Who told her about the old mortuary in the basement. And she was like, that’s cool. That won’t fuck with my already brain damaged cancer-ridden child. I have ZERO sympathy for these cheap parents.

As soon as they move into this death trap, the teenage boy starts to see extremely disturbing things. However, he is afraid to tell anyone because they will yank him out of the cancer treatment. This is why we need healthcare reform; so families don’t have to keep living in haunted houses. Next election, please vote the “Families Who Don’t Want to Be Haunted Party.” Not sure which line that is. Probably Socialist.

The hauntings keep escalating and eventually start to affect the other members of the family. The father who travels back and forth to their old hometown is becoming more withdrawn and a louder drunk. The younger kids are trying to just play in their gigantic sparsely furnished house. The cousin is concerned about Matt, the cancer ridden boy. And the mother just keeps praying and threatening God.

Matt finds an friend and confidant in a pastor who is also receiving treatment at the same cancer center. For a man of the cloth, he seems to know A LOT about demonology and necromancy. And also for someone who seems to be a fairly lengthy resident, doesn’t know a lot about the haunted house in his town. Even when the cousin, Wendy, and Matt went to the library, they were able to round all the history as fast as a Google search. And this was 1987.

If you don’t know this story, I won’t ruin the ending. Although the ending is a lot happier than other movies I’ve watched. The entire story could have just been based on the hallucinogenic visions of a teenage kid who’s mind was destroyed by chemo drugs. I will still be triple checking with a realtor when I am house hunting. They have to tell you, it’s the law.

One final note: I was immediately NOT scared of this movie, because of all fonts they could have chosen for the opening credits, they chose….PAPYRUS.