For all intents and purposes, the awards season is over and now the doldrums of January are upon us. It's the time of low-risk, high reward genre flicks where horrors, actioners, and lowbrow comedies rule. We're good for one film breaking out and becoming a huge hit around this time every single year, and one film that has a better shot than any to do it next month is Marlon Wayans' A Haunted House.
A new red band trailer for the horror-comedy has been released, and unfortunately it's probably exactly what you thought it would be. A parody of found footage horrors like Paranormal Activity and The Last Exorcism, it follows a couple(Wayans and Essence Atkins) who move in together only to find out that their entire relationship is haunted. A profanity-fueled intro by Wayans is only the beginning of what is basically 2 1/2 minutes of the film's most stale sex gags. Truly, the marketing team is doing Wayans no favors here. Having seen it and spoken to him myself, there are better moments they could be hyping, and I wish more attention was paid to the back and forth between Wayans and Atkins. I know that element is probably a tougher sell than the broader comedy, but it's what worked best.
Directed by Michael Tiddes, co-written by Wayans and Rick Alvarez, A Haunted House opens on January 11th. Whether or not the film works is something I can't say right now, but it's not just some attempt to recapture old Scary Movie glory, and it's certainly a damn sight better than what that franchise has ultimately become.
