“I don’t feel anything.”

Story: Techie Liam, psychic Holly, and skeptic Scott, are sent to a house to investigate possible supernatural issues. What caused the family to run, leaving everything behind? Could it be…SATAN? Oh, you know the drill.

Scares: A few eerie moments.
Splat Factor: Slim to none.

Subgenre: Ghost Hunters Horrors
Year Released: 2015
Remake, Sequel or OG (Original Ghoul)?: Inspired by a local New Zealand legend of a haunted house.

Trick or Treat?: I love local folklore. Urban legends. Y’know, stuff where folks from around those parts have been talking about Something Spooky Around Here for years and years. Room takes the usual “people go into a house they should not have gone into” story and deliver nothing but the usual creaks, groans, and unsurprising ending we’ve seen a million times before. But this time they have New Zealand accents! Yay.

We’re dropped into the story without preamble, and even 40 minutes in, I don’t know – or particularly care – about these three. That leaves the spooky house to deliver any emotional punch. Luckily, Room does have a way with eerie goings-on. Even with the hilariously shoddy CGI shattered glass, director Jason Stutter is able to conjure up a sufficient amount of Poltergeist-lite FX that’ll keep fans of haunted house stories happily engaged. There are also gorgeous shots of the surrounding New Zealand countryside. Seriously, absolutely beautiful greenery as far as the eye can see. It lends a sharp contrast to the sad, plain house Our Trio are working in. It’s banal in it’s horror, except for the three parakeets the family left when they abruptly split. Who’s the real monster; save those poor birbs, dammit.

Our Trio tries desperately to figure out how to document the goings-on in the house, with the usual goose-egg at the start. But there’s one room that seems to be without ghostly activity. Chairs fly, walls pound, and poor Holly swears she sees ghostly apparitions. The story has these three taking just about any opportunity to split up, proving yet again that white people do not have a single brain cell when they’re in horror movies. It’s pretty much law at this point. There’s even the ol’ “one more night, that’s all I’m asking” from Liam, the brain-trust of the operation. Sadly, Scott persuades them to stay, with a predictable outcome.

The last ten minutes are pretty decent. But it’s crammed in at the last minute, with a final Bughuul shot, as if the rest of this film wasn’t just cobbled together from ghosty-type films we’ve seen before.

Score: 1.5 out of 5 pumpkins.