Jack and Vanessa (Rob Corddry and Leslie Bibb, respectfully)
are an expecting couple who move in a predominantly African American
neighborhood in the haunted house that everyone crosses the street to avoid
except for, of course, their neighbor F’resnel
(Keegan-Michael Key) who more or less lives in the crawl spaces of the
house. It’s not even one night before
Jack and Vanessa start to experience strange things in the house and Vanessa
finds herself possessed and ready to give birth to a baby from Hell. When Jack and Vanessa need help they contact
Father Sebastian and Father Padrigo (Garant and Lennon, respectfully) who come
in to try to save Vanessa and her unborn child before it is too late.
Corddry plays it straight whereas everyone else knows they’re
in a spoof film as everything that can go wrong does…to Corddry that is. This could actually have been a very funny
movie in a Tom Hanks in The Money Pit
kind of way if not for the extreme over reliance on gore FX and gross out humor
that is repetitive and goes on for too long.
Both gross out humor and gore can be used to great effect (such as in Stand by Me and American Pie or Shaun of the
Dead) but in this film it is over used to the point of being excessive and
no longer funny which probably wouldn’t have been too bad but all the jokes
fall flat or are just bad. Whereas I
loved this type of humor in the thirty minute episodes of Reno 911! it is ineffective here.
The always funny Key is wasted in this film as he has
humorous “bits” are nothing on the same level as his own show Key & Peele. One good thing about the film is the high
production values and the art direction which are better than anything Garant
and Thomas had on the Reno 911 show
or even the movie version. It’s just a
shame that it was all wasted on this film.
The two seem like they want to do a straight up comedy-horror film but
it ends up crashing under the weight of being a spoof film and fails completely
in both.
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