For the longest time, haunted house movies have been plagued
by a single question: Why the fuck haven’t you left yet? Easily one of the most
mockable cliches in horror (and it’s not as if there’s nothing else to make fun
of within the trope-ier corners of the genre), it has likewise fallen into the
realm of cliché to even point it out. The presence of something beyond this
world makes itself known to the family living in a new house, and because the
plot demands it, they never question that they haven't taken that as a sign that maybe it's time to move.
Not that all movies hand-wave this away, though. During the 2010s, James Wan and Mike Flanagan treated the question with a lot of postmodern clarity, and even further back, Beetlejuice remains one of my favourite examples of the sub-genre purely because it answers that question in a delightfully kooky fashion. Today’s film, however, is far less kitschy. In fact, it makes for one of the more sobering features I’ve ever seen from the haunted house clique.
