Movie Review - Havenhurst
JACKIE (Julie Benz) is a raging alcoholic. After being released from rehab, she goes on a mission to find her friend Danielle (Danielle Harris).
Her search leads her to a gothic apartment complex, where Eleanor (Fionnula Flanagan) houses reformed addicts, giving them a new lease on life.
But there is one cardinal rule: never fall back on your old vices. Or else.
The movie is filled with tension and dread from the start, and it tries to hold this mood till the end, much to its own detriment.
After the first 15 minutes, the scares became routine, and that is where the flaws begin to show.
It does not help that Jackie makes bad decisions. When advised to take the option that anyone with common sense would clearly choose, she does something else.
I did not feel that Havenhurst, the apartment building run by Eleanor, was all that bad either. It offers former delinquents a comfortable home, and a second chance that they would otherwise never get elsewhere.
The movie tries its best to portray the Havenhurst as evil by planting intriguing mysteries that go nowhere, but the one cardinal rule did not seem unfair, although the consequences are a little extreme.
By the halfway mark, the audience would be intimately familiar with Benz’s every facial expression as her face takes up most of the screen, while she breathily delivers her every line. For me, it was just lazy cinematography.
In the end, it felt like the movie could not make up its mind on what to be. It falls short of being a good mystery, the threat was not all that evil, and the violence was sparse.
Havenhurst has potential. It is there, hidden within its ever-changing walls and hidden halls, but its delivery was only on par with a made-for-TV movie.
Nevertheless, it is enjoyable as a movie to satirise on.
Watch the trailer here :