Return to House on Haunted Hill (DVD)

House on Haunted Hill came out quite a few years ago — it was stylishly directed by William Malone, well-acted by Jeffrey Combs as baddie Dr. Vannacutt, and heavily produced by Joel Silver — and as far as I know, that was good enough. So why make another one, now?

The direct-to-disc release (with the participation of returnees Silver and Combs) takes a lot of visual cues from the original (although Malone and DP Rick Bota are not back — this time, it's Victor Garcia in the director's chair and Lorenzo Senatore behind the lens), but the story is different. In fact, it's as different as you'd like it to be: the Blu-ray and HD DVD versions both include a feature called Navigational Cinema, which enables viewers to interact with the storyline (96 possibilities, culminating in four alternate endings). The ability to take horror fans into so many "rooms" in this creaky old haunted house was definitely a factor in making a sequel.

The plot picks up with the mansion-massacre's sole survivor Sarah Wolfe's (previously played by Ali Larter) suicide, and her younger sister Ariel's (Amanda Righetti) determination in finding out why Sarah would take her own life after having been through so much. (Hint: Dr. Vannacutt might have something to do with it!)

Playing out much like a videogame, Ariel follows clues in a misbegotten diary into the house, and along with several human embodiments of cannon fodder (played by Erik Palladino, Cerina Vincent, and Tom Riley), she gathers clues to hopefully solve the puzzle and stop Vannacutt for good. Needless to say, the treasure hunt reawakens the ghostly, malevolent beings trapped inside the house, and their bloody reign of terror begins all over again. Several reasonably clever, super-bloody death scenes ensue.

The acting is decent in Return to House on Haunted Hill, given the limitations in character and dialogue. Actually, Combs stands out as having little to say and making the most of revamping the scare factor of Vannacutt — a sadistic psychiatric doctor who supposedly perished in a fire started by his patients in 1931. Always a welcome presence onscreen, quite frankly Combs is one of the few, and the best, reasons to see this movie. Other than him, and the featurettes, Return to House on Haunted Hill is pretty standard real estate.

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