VOD Spotlight: A Haunted House

A Haunted House spoofs the horror genre and targets hits like Paranormal Activity, The Devil Inside, Sinister, The Possession and other “found footage” films with the story of a couple, Malcolm (Marlon Wayans) and Kisha (Essence Atkins), who have just moved into their dream home. Unfortunately, they are not alone. There’s a demon present who quickly takes possession of Kisha. Malcolm, determined to keep his relationship — and more importantly, his sex life — on track, turns to a priest, a psychic and a team of modern-day ghost-busters for help.

A Haunted HouseA Haunted House was cowritten by Wayans, star of In Living Color and no stranger to parody movies — he starred in Scary Movie and Scary Movie 2 as well as Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, which sends up African-American-centric movies like Boyz N the Hood, South Central and Menace II Society. Wayans told The Urban Daily website that A Haunted House is not exactly a parody. “It’s a horror-comedy. It’s not so much a parody because I think parody has gone into a bad place. We wanted to reinvent and reinvigorate that word. So we did more of a sendup and we did it as a horror-comedy.”

In the same Urban Daily interview, Wayans said that despite the main characters being black, he believes A Haunted House will appeal to all audiences. He joked, “It will be interesting for white people to come see this movie because in this movie, we do the opposite of what they do. They’re gonna get a big kick out of it. I watched it play with a big audience that was multicultural and everybody gets it. It’s really funny!”

A Haunted House is rated R and is full of no-holds-barred crude jokes and situations. It also includes a cast of familiar faces: In addition to Wayans, the film’s talent includes Nick Swardson (of Reno 911! and That’s My Boy fame), Cedric the Entertainer (The Proud Family, The Steve Harvey Show), David Koechner (The Office, Beavis and Butt-Head, American Dad!) and J.B. Smoove (Curb Your Enthusiasm, ’Til Death).

The film finished second in its opening weekend, earning $18.1 million at the box office (the production only cost $2.5 million to start) and it has since gone on to gross $40 million (as of March 3, 2013). Also, Comedy Central has already made a deal with Open Road Films (which released A Haunted House) that is expected to bring the movie to the network in March 2015.

A Haunted House is available starting April 23 on Video On Demand. Check your cable system for availability.

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© 2013 Open Road Films LLC