Few horror movie sub-genres are more enduring, influential, and prolific than the haunted house movie. A solid genre staple, haunted house movies captivate with their eerie atmospheres and the intense psychological games that so often unfold. From early cinematic examples like The Old Dark House (1932) to modern re-imaginings such as Steven Soderbergh’s Presence, now playing in theaters everywhere (get tickets now), the haunted house subgenre has consistently evolved while retaining its core elements.
The enduring appeal of these stories lies in the sub-genre’s ability to tap into universal fears—abandonment, the unknown, and the unsettling notion that our homes, meant to be places of safety, can become sites of terror. While traditional tropes like creaky floorboards, flickering lights, tragic backstories, and isolated locations have certainly shaped the subgenre’s identity, films that challenge and expand these tried and true tropes have allowed the subgenre to evolve and flourish.
With Presence, Soderbergh puts his own unique spin on the haunted house film by shifting the perspective from the haunted to the haunter. While this POV shift undoubtedly subverts the classic haunted house narrative stance, it’s not the only innovative card Soderbergh has to play. To celebrate the release of Presence, here are a few other haunted house films that flipped the script and dared to do things a little differently.
House (1977)
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Nobuhiko Obayashi’s film House (Hausu) is a cinematic experience like no other. After being encouraged to make a film similar to Jaws, Obayashi consulted his daughter Chigumi to learn more about her childhood fears. Obayashi then combined Chigumi’s vivid and highly creative ideas with his own memories and ideas surrounding the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What resulted was a script that follows a girl named Gorgeous and her six friends as they visit her aunt’s isolated country home, which devours the girls one by one.
Despite having a creepy cat and a basic framework that fits the classic haunted house tradition, nothing else about House is basic. Or traditional. Obayashi juxtaposed live action with dazzling hand-drawn animations to beef up the more bizarre elements of the story, like the aggressively violent piano, disembodied heads, and myriad vicious household items. The combination of these psychedelic visuals and absurdist-style horrors is truly something to behold and has only further solidified the film’s cult classic status as time marches on. Safe to say, there will never be another film like it.
The Deep House (2021)
Few movies take the classic spooky, isolated house on the hill idea and flip it more literally than The Deep House. Directed by the dynamic French duo Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo
(Inside, The Soul Eater), the film follows Ben, an ambitious YouTuber (James Jagger) and his adventurous girlfriend Tina (Camille Rowe). Hearing about a sanatorium in France that became submerged during the creation of an artificial lake in the 1980s, the pair can hardly pack fast enough as Ben fantasizes about all the views such a unique site will bring.
After arriving at the lake, Ben’s dreams dissipate when they discover the location has become a hot spot for tourists and content creators alike. Lucky for Ben, a local named Pierre tips the couple off to a lesser-known, perfectly preserved submerged house and even offers to take them to it. As those fluent in horror may guess, Pierre’s kindness is no accident and costs the brave duo dearly.
Setting most of the film underwater, Maury and Bustillo push the boundaries of many familiar haunted house tropes while reaping the anxiety-inducing benefits of aquatic horror. While it was surely no easy feat for cinematographer Jacques Ballard, The Deep House is haunting and incredibly eerie. The water setting injects an unnerving surreality that supports a nearly constant sense of dread and claustrophobia. By creatively blending two seemingly disparate horror subgenres, Maury and Bustillo add something truly singular to the haunted house roster.
Thir13en Ghosts (2001)
Part of the early 2000s horror remake boom, Steve Beck’s Thir13en Ghosts dusted off William Castle’s 1960 classic for a whole new generation of horror fans. While the totally rad spelling of the 2001 version might lead one to believe that few remnants of the original source material survive intact, there is a surprising amount of shared DNA between the two. For example, both films feature an obsessive ghost collector, his massive house filled with distinctive ghosts, his poor relatives who inherit way more than they bargained for, and an unfortunate series of events that soon spiral out of control.
Alongside these more standard traits, Thir13en Ghosts also features some unique attributes that deviate from the formula and have seared into many a millennial brain. Instead of an old, creaky, gothic abode, Thir13en Ghosts trades in the stained wood and crown molding for a state-of-the-art glass monstrosity with an occult-fueled machine at its core. Outfitted with the latest in paranormal technology, this modern marvel boasts Latin barrier-spell-etched Ectobar glass throughout to keep the house’s carefully curated assortment of dangerous ghosts in check. At the same time, specially designed spectral goggles allow mere mortals to keep tabs on the ghosts while looking super cool in the process. A memorable haunted house for the Y2K era, indeed.
The Frighteners (1996)
One of the most common tropes in haunted house movies is the malevolent spirit or entity that is either summoned or somehow attached to a property. More often than not, these ghosts and ghouls are presented as either tragic or evil beings up to no good. And while there are a few sinful specters in The Frighteners, co-writer Fran Walsh and director/co-writer Peter Jackson gleefully wink at the trope by having ghosts play both heroes and villains to delightful and genuinely clever effect.
In the movie, Michael J. Fox stars as Frank Bannister, a terrible driver and psychic investigator haunted by far more than ghosts. After a horrific car accident and losing his wife, Frank discovers his brush with death has given him the ability to communicate with ghosts. Naturally, Frank assembles a motley crew of ghost friends and begins running a shady ghost-busting business (aka, a staged haunted house con). However, when an ominous, cloaked figure causes a series of mysterious deaths, Frank must set aside his grift and confront his past to stop the entity for good.
Ghostwatch (1992)
Originally broadcast on Halloween night in 1992 as part of the BBC One series Screen One, Ghostwatch was presented as a live news broadcast investigation that sought to capture proof of the paranormal. In the film, a team of real BBC television anchors and personalities look into a supposed haunting in a suburban London home. While the mysterious happenings initially seem to all be a hoax perpetrated by one of the young girls living in the home, this assumption is quickly proven so very wrong.
Ghostwatch‘s premise is indeed clever, and based on the story of the Enfield Poltergeist. But even after all these years, its most brilliant aspect is its documentary style. Upon its initial release, the film was so compelling and convincing that thousands of viewers mistook it for live events. By daring to present itself as an actual news special, Ghostwatch sparked a massive amount of controversy and garnered instant cult classic status in the process.
House II: The Second Story (1987)
Some movies intentionally set out to push boundaries, subvert tropes, and play with expectations to deliver something new and different. And then there are some movies that achieve these same goals by being so absolutely bonkers it seemingly defies logic. House II: The Second Story, written and directed by Ethan Wiley, is one of the latter.
In typical haunted house style, the film follows a young man named Jesse (Arye Gross), who inherits a creaky old mansion. While the movie starts simple enough, things quickly go off the rails when Jesse discovers his great-great-grandfather once possessed a large crystal skull. Thinking that he may have been buried with it, Jesse and his friend Charlie decide to dig up the old man, just in case. While hoping to find treasure, they instead discover the zombified cowboy corpse of dear old Gramps, who’s ready to party.
Before long, Jesse and his friends are traversing time and space, befriending Cater-Puppies, teaming up with an electrician who is also a part-time adventurer, and experiencing all sorts of supernatural mayhem related to the house’s magical powers. Unfolding like a muddled retelling of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull by a highly imaginative 8-year-old, House II mixes horror, humor, and fantasy into a signature cocktail all its own.
Skinamarink (2022)
After garnering significant buzz during its initial festival run, whispers about Kyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink soon became shouts when a leaked version of the film hit the internet. Demand for the film resulted in a surprisingly successful theatrical run and countless divisive follow-up conversations and opinions. Shot from the literal perspective of a child, the movie follows two young 90s kids who wake up in the middle of the night to find their dad missing and all the doors and windows in their home vanished. Though initially just a little confused, the kids’ puzzlement soon shifts to terror when they discover that they aren’t exactly alone after all.
Uncomfortable, weird, experimental, and amorphous, Skinamarink is a movie that hypnotically flows like molasses. Everything about how modern cinematic stories are made and told is challenged here. For some, Ball’s daring approach and lo-fi liminal style resonate with deep-seated childhood memories and fears. For others, it is nothing more than an analog slog. No matter where one ultimately falls on the Skinamarink fandom spectrum, the ballsiness of Ball’s novel approach to relaying a haunted house-style story cannot be denied.
Honorable Mentions:
● The Others (2001)
● Paranormal Activity (2007)
● Insidious (2010)
● Below (2002)
● The Sentinel (1977)
● Housebound (2014)
Presence is now playing in theaters. In her four-skull review, Meagan Navarro calls it “an innovative and grim nail-biter with more on its mind than the logline suggests.” Get tickets now.
