The Scarehouse

"The Scarehouse" is yet another example as to what is wrong with the Canadian film industry. The biggest reason as to why the movie fails can be seen in its credits. The person who is given credit for the direction (Gavin Michael Booth) not only directed the movie, he is given credit for the script, editing, and as one of the movie's producers. The Canadian government loves to fund movie projects by "auteurs", even though there are very few people in the Canadian film industry (or film industries in other countries, for that matter) that can successfully take on more that one role on the production of a movie. Obviously, there was really no one on board this movie project that could interfere with Booth's vision, and as a result, this movie fails like so many vanity productions. The characters in the movie are all repulsive, the narrative is garbled, and the production values (such as with bargain basement cinematography and lighting) are absolutely rock bottom... among many other problems. While I'm glad that the Canadian government is starting to fund more commercial movies instead of just art house dramas, they still don't seem to understand that the bulk of the movies they are choosing to fund (regardless of genre) simply are doomed to failure because they are badly conceived vanity projects. Unless the Canadian government changes their policy, Canadians will continue to ignore their filmmakers' films.