Return to House on Haunted Hill (Video) (2007)

2/10

This is a bad sequel to a good remake. This stars Geoffrey Combs reprising his role as Dr. Vannacutt, Amanda Righetti (2009s "Friday the 13th") as Ariel, Cerina Vincent ("Cabin Fever") as Michelle, Erik Palladino ("Dead and Breakfast") as Desmond, Andrew Potts ("Popcorn" as Kyle, There are more actors and characters, but I doubt you will care that much.

Sara from the first film sends Vannacutt's diary to her sister Ariel. Sara dies of a supposed suicide, which Ariel thinks may not be a suicide.

Now it just gets stupid. The journal contains the only clues to some treasure in the haunted asylum. Professor Hammer and evil guy Desmond both happen to figure this out at the same time. Prof and his crew just go to the house, while Desmond and his crew kidnap Airel and her crew.

The groups all meet at the house, but Desmond's group wins because they have guns. The house decides to shut its infamous iron cladding again. As everyone tromps around looking for the statue, they begin to be picked off by the still-angry ghosts which were supposed to be released in the previous movie. Eventually they find the 'treasure', and the ending stinks.

There are some nice shocks and death sequences. The acting is bad. The visuals are OK, but the audio suffers from the same bad equalization problem most direct to video films have.

This really is not worth renting. If a cable station has it on late at night it is worth watching for some of the death sequences, but that is pretty much it. The entire plot is just nonsense.