See there's this new species out there. A hybrid. Horror-comedy they call it. You watch the movie, you get scared, you laugh a little here and there. It's catching on. I highly recommend it.
Director Michael Merino's The Haunting of Pearson Place fits the bill. Scary here, funny there. Lot's going on. Hell's a popping'. See it all centers on a yuppie couple who want to buy an old house and turn it into a bed and breakfast (don't they always?). Gwen and Steven (Tracy Teague, as good here as she was in Respire, and always excellent Ken Arnold) have a strained marriage and they figger somehow this will save it.
Seems like these yuppie couples never listen to the locals, for example the likes of store owner Carol (effectively scary Kelly Slagle) who suggests the place has a lot of negative energy, and they just might want to reconsider being proprietors of a bed and breakfast. Seems like the house once served as a hospice for World War I soldiers who did not die there in a pleasant manner. From there it gets really weird. Where's Rod Serling?
Throw in another, more annoying couple, Catherine and Michael (Aussie actress Julie Price and why-isn't-he-famous Regan Wilson), and stir, and you get a recipe that stinks to high heaven when Gwen gets reminded of her husband Steven's questionable history with Catherine. We see Teague, as Gwen, throw her delicious bitchiness around like a hatchet.
If that wasn't bad enough, weirdo real estate agent (Joe Estevez, Charlie Sheen's uncle) pops in and out of thin air every so often to harass Steven, and talks to folks who ain't there. Hmmm. We see a wacked-out chick in a bathtub, mannequins that talk, a hand coming from under the bed and such like. All punctuated by laughs hither and yon. Funniest of all is inspector from the county, Jim Shoemaker (the excellent Mick McGuire), who has a too-close moment with Michael that will have you ROTFL.
The Haunting of Pearson Place will leave you thrilled, chilled and your funny bone grilled.
