Housebound got us thinking… What are some of the other scariest haunted houses in cinema? After coming up with several thousand terrifying options, we narrowed ’em down to these ten entries that you couldn’t pay us good money to visit. Sentence us to home detention in them? We probably wouldn’t have a choice, so OK then.
10. The Lutz Residence (The Amityville Horror)
Just look at it – this is one of the iconic freaky f–king houses of cinema. From 1979 it’s been the setting for a horror series that unsurprisingly took more and more liberties with its based-on-an-allegedly-true-story premise of pararnormal activity at a former mass murder scene. You probably won’t be surprised, either, that the series got worse and worse, and cheaper and cheaper until Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George starred in a 2005 remake and the cycle began anew – with a Jennifer Jason Leigh-starring sequel on its way in the new year.
9. Oshare’s Aunt’s House (Hausu)
Oh, you never heard of this crazy-as-a-married-mongoose film from 1977 Japan? Well, we’d describe it if we could, but we’d just end up confusing you and ourselves. All we can do is show you this clip and wish you luck in the future.
8. Yankee Pedlar Inn (The Innkeepers)
OK, so it isn’t a house. We get it, no need to send emails saying “Hey Flicks idiots, this isn’t a house, it’s an inn”. Yep, we know, that’s inn the title, smartypants. Ti West’s blend of slackerdom and scares featuring the winning pairing of Sara Paxton and Pat Healy conjured up thoughts like “what if Clerks was set in a haunted video store?” and “what if the Paranormal Activity films had characters?” There’s no escaping the creepiness of an old empty building though, and it’s easy to see how West’s thoughts drifted to the ghostly after staying at this hotel while shooting a prior film.
7. The (late) Maitland Residence (Beetlejuice)
Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara (Geena Davis) died shortly after tirelessly renovating their dream home, and they’ll be damned if they let some rich snobs take it over. Thus, in their new ghostly forms, they haunt the house they made for themselves, possessing said snobs at the dinner and forcing them to perform a rendition of Day-o. It’s not exactly the most frightening way to spend an evening, but when the zebra-suit-wearing Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) comes onto the scene, that’s when the haunts amplify.
6. The (late) Kayako and Toshio Residence (Ju-on: The Grudge)
We can’t think of a film that made all of the necessary fundamentals of architecture as frightening as the various Grudge films, Western remake included (geographic Western, not genre). Right angles, stairs, corners, hallways – all of these things took on unnaturally sinister connotations as we were ushered around this haunted setting, usually in painfully slow, anxiety-inducing sequences. F–k living in that place, at the very least get rid of the stairs and put a bloody firemans’ pole or something in, so you never have to see that ghost thing flop its way downstairs.
5. Hill House (The Haunting)
Hill House is one of the founding… erm… foundations of cinematic haunted houses, photographed gorgeously in Robert Wise’s 1963 classic. It may seem cliché by today’s standards, but only because The Haunting acted as the go-to blueprint for future haunted house horrors that indulge in architectural anarchy. If that status isn’t enough, even Liam f&%king Neeson was afraid of this house in Jan de Bont’s 1999 remake. Not that we recommend that film…
4. The Freeling Residence (Poltergeist)
The gold standard for places you shouldn’t build houses, the polite subdivision that’s the setting for Poltergeist better not be the sort of solution politicians look to for New Zealand’s housing crisis. Sure, there will be a boost to the economy thanks to all the additional employment opportunities for small businesses (mediums), and building standards may not need to be too strictly enforced, since the house might not last the paranormal stresses anyway, but it’s safe to say the cons of this kind of lifestyle outweigh the pros. Having said that, we’d be happy to watch The Block: Poltergeist if that show needs a fresh angle next time around.
3. Mr. Nebbercracker’s House (Monster House)
Most spirits that possess a haunted houses take a more subtle approach to scaring its victims, but not Mr. Nebbercracker’s house. In the underappreciated animated feature debut from Gil Kenan (who’s also directing next year’s Poltergeist remake), the titular house takes a monstrous form, snatching people from the outside with it’s tongue-like carpet and even seizing control of the trees on its lawn. As if that wasn’t horrifying enough for the early teens who witness this, the climax says “screw you” to the rulebook and has the haunted house break from its foundations and CHASES THEM THROUGH THE STREETS!
2. The Overlook Hotel (The Shining)
Sure, a house that can manifest into a monster is pretty terrifying, but a hotel that gets inside your very mind and convinces you to kill your family is downright satanic. That’s exactly the type of horror Stanley Kubrick brought to his adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining. This wasn’t a place that frightened viewers with ghosts that go “Boo!” – this was a house that purged your very sanity with hallucinations of dead twin sisters, sex acts involving dog costumes, and elevators filled with blood. It’s a type of mind-cleansing that certainly worked on Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), whose “all work and no play” attitude made him a dull, angry, maniacal, axe-swinging, homicidal, talk-show-quoting boy.
1. That Cabin in the Woods (Every horror featuring a cabin in the woods)
Out of all the haunted houses on the list, nothing can beat this specifically designed cabin that has all manners of horrors thrown at it. Machete-wielding maniacs (Friday the 13th), Nazi zombies (Dead Snow), demonic grope-y trees (The Evil Dead), and a nasty rash (Cabin Fever) are just a few of the things that terrorise the (often teenage) occupants of seemingly innocent cabins in seemingly innocent woods. But if 2012’s The Cabin in the Woods is to be believed, these supposedly separate cabins are all connected, and the real entity that haunts these cabins is a group of scientists from around the globe who specifically engineer these scenarios in order to please a massive deity that would otherwise destroy the world.
