October 6: A Horror Film That Includes Time Travel

Vincenzo Natali, the director of this movie, was drawn to it because all he had to do was shoot it and not develop it. After spending 12 years bringing Splice to life, that seemed like a great plan. Haunter was written by Brian King, They’d also worked on Cypher several years before.

Natali said, “Out of the blue I came across my friend Brian King’s script for what was then called Company Man. Ultimately it was named Cypher. And then that came together very quickly. It took maybe…I don’t know, it was another 6-8 months and we were shooting the movie. And almost an identical thing happened with Haunter because I had these sort of long-standing, very ambitious projects, High Rise and Neuromancer that I’d been trying to do after Splice. And, invariably, it takes a long time. So, in the interim, Brian came up with this new script, entirely his creation. And I really loved it. We put it together in probably about the same time period, like eight months or less and we were shooting. So Brian keeps saving my ass. That’s how it works.”

Lisa Johnson (Abigail Breslin) lives with her father Bruce (Peter Outerbridge), mother Carol (Michelle Nolden) and brother Robbie (Peter DaCunha) somewhere in northern Ontario, sometime around 1985. Except that she’s the only one of them that realizes that they’re all dead.

Ignoring the warnings of a being known as the Pale Man (Stephen McHattie), she starts to contact the spirits of the multiple dead families that have lived in the house, traveling to their own timelines, as well as one where Olivia (Eleanor Zichy) and her family are still alive.

She awakens her family and they help her to battle who the Pale Man really is, a serial killer named Edgar Mullins who has possessed each family’s father to continue his murder spree. She helps her family to escape the time loop that they are in yet remains behind to save Olivia and her family, hoping to finally end the cycle of killing.

Man, this movie is everything Blumhouse movies try to be and fail, unable to have a coherent beginning, middle and end. This is how it’s done. And it’s always nice to see David Hewlett, who plays Olivia’s father.

Also: A Ouija movie to add to my Letterboxd list!

You can watch this on Tubi.