Del reviews ‘Haunting on Fraternity Row’

Image courtesy of Benaroya Pictures.

“Haunting on Fraternity Row” starring Jacob Artist, Jayson Blair and Shanley Caswell. Directed by Brant Sersen. 99 minutes. Rated TV-MA.

Del’s take

There’s no explaining my Netflix whims, but they have introduced me to surprisingly good films (“Troll Hunter, “Birdbox”) and some real stinkers ( “Open House,” “IO”).

Then there’s that gray area between, where movies that are neither good nor awful fall. “Haunting on Fraternity Row” fits that realm. You can’t expect much from a movie with the word “fraternity” in its title and “Haunting” doesn’t provide much. It’s a frat party punch bowl of clichéd characters and their predicaments that you have seen a thousand times before minus these silly details.

The story is about a group of frathouse seniors on the day of their last big bash before graduation, the annual Luau Party. They want this to be a party for the ages because although it’s never said, they seem to collectively understand their time together is soon to end and they don’t want these days to be forgotten (although they will). So the boys are busy abusing pledges, stocking the shelves with booze and kegs, setting up Hawaiian-themed decorations and flirting with sorority cleaning girls.

Speaking of kegs, the hapless pledges drop one down the basement stairs and it punches a hole through a wall, revealing a tunnel that opens into a scary room with scores of light fixtures. One of the boys refers to it as a place where “you can’t see your shadow.” Oooh-weeee-ooooh.

The room is quickly forgotten as party time approaches. Tiki torches are lit. Sand is poured for the “beach.” A slaughtered pig makes its way to the roaster. And did I mention booze? Oceans of booze – the entire output of a brewery and a distillery – is laid out in astonishing plentitude. It’s like Golden Corral buffet for alcoholics.

Frat brother Dougie (Ashton Moio), meanwhile, has been researching the house’s past and learns that a terrible event took place here decades ago – the owner at that time invited a group of people to dinner and slaughtered them. Dougie thinks the creepy room may have some larger significance than a room where a person can’t see his shadow.

The party commences, with all the alcohol-fueled, sex-starved antics you know to expect from countless movies about frat boys and the sorority girls who love them – until all hell breaks loose, and I mean literally breaks loose. Objects move, mysterious growls emanate from the shadows, and people start dying, their eyes seemingly burned from the sockets.

I won’t tell you what happens afterwards should you decide to throw away an hour and a half of your life on this movie. Suffice it to say “Haunting” has more vices than virtues. It is sometimes amusing (but not often enough), sometimes spooky, and it might just remind you of a college experience or two (not me – I commuted).

Notice that damning with faint praise? That’s because “Haunting” is mostly a hastily assembled mashup of hackneyed characters doing what hackneyed characters do – except they’re doing it in a horror movie. That might work with sufficient camp (“Happy Death Day”), but the laughs are about as unlikely as any of these dimwits getting a job after graduation.

You’ve got the rich asshole and his catty sorority girlfriend, the hunk who’s dumb as a brick, the fat pledge, the nerd pledge, the smart frat who uses his powers for, well, neither good nor evil, but nothing productive either. Then you’ve got the earnest, soulful frat, Jason (Jacob Artist), and the girl he’s crushing on, Claire (Shanley Caswell). Jason is too shy to make his move but Claire is patient and awaits his stiffened courage (not what you think) while the other boys rollick in the receding tide of hormonal sex addiction (they are about to graduate from college, after all). Will Jason and Claire hook up? Will Dougie get to the bottom of the frathouse murder mystery?

And who’s going to clean up this mess?

I didn’t much care for “Haunting.” Characters are thinly sketched. The house’s backstory is barely touched. A motivation for the “haunting” is absent. Director Sersen seems to care more about scenes of college debauchery and raunchy dialogue than telling a decent ghost story.

It’s all very cursory and sketchy. I wasn’t scared because I didn’t care about anybody. You won’t either.

For a sparse moment of fun check out “Haunting on Fraternity Row.” I caught it on Netflix, where all it cost me was 99 minutes of boredom.

Grade D+.

Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.

The author went to the Choctaw-Fort Walton Beach game in 2022 and snapped this photo as the Indians came onto the field. Image courtesy of Del Stone Jr.

I haven’t been to a high school football game in years. I don’t remember who won. I don’t remember caring.

I know people hereabouts take their high school football seriously, and that’s fine. I take my NFL football seriously, despite the fact it’s looking more and more like professional wrestling every day.

I haven’t kept up with the local prep sports scene. I know Niceville is a powerhouse, Choctaw is so-so and Fort Walton Beach is weak. I don’t know the whys and hows of all that. Apparently it’s complicated and immune to generalizations, but it has something to do with geography, coaches and the ability to transfer to a school that isn’t zoned for your area.

Whatever. As they say, I have no dog in this hunt.

But I can appreciate that some people do care, especially the parents of boys and girls who compete on the field. Now that college has become as expensive as a waterfront mansion, it’s important that kids earn scholarships. One of the clearest avenues to a scholarship is high school sports.

Some of those kids are walking away with full rides to play football for schools like Alabama and Florida State. And if they excel in college sports, then we’re talking the possibility of a stint in the pros, where unheard of riches await the talented athlete.

The price of things, the job market and the state of the economy are such that without a scholarship, kids may not have a college option. That’s too bad because these days we need the smartest, best-educated and most talented people running the country, not these schleps we’re being asked to vote for now.

I hear the football scene at Fort Walton Beach High School is unsettled. Their athletic director had to leave after he failed teacher certification requirements. I can sympathize; about five years ago I studied for the GRE and was amazed to discover I had forgotten much of what I learned in high school, never mind college.

Another blow: Fort Walton Beach’s quarterback, Brady Ooten, transferred to rival Choctawhatchee.

I don’t have an opinion on that. It’s none of my business. Obviously he and his parents felt it was best for his future that he make the switch. Apparently he’s a talented kid and has a chance at making it in college. With so much at stake, a transfer was probably in his best interests.

What did surprise me, and what I do have an opinion about, is the reaction Ooten’s story received on the Daily News’ Facebook page.

Predictably, some folks felt he was thinking only of himself. Others backed his decision, pointing to some of the issues I’ve raised.

What shocked me was how many people dismissed the notion of loyalty.

To them, loyalty was an outmoded, antiquated concept that had no place in today’s world of high-dollar, high-stakes high school sports. One person asked, “Being loyal to a high school team will get him where in life?”

To that person I would say: Loyalty to a high school team will get you everywhere in life.

Loyalty is a trait sadly lacking in our culture. Corporations are no longer loyal to their customers or employees. Family members aren’t loyal to each other. Yet loyalty has an instructional value that far surpasses its downsides.

Loyalty will teach you lessons that cannot be learned from any book, about how to succeed when you are surrounded by failure, and how to persevere when circumstances are lined up against you. It will teach you that some things in life are worth making sacrifices for, and nothing is gained without hard work and sometimes pain. It will also teach you that sometimes you must rely on help from others, and sometimes you must help others to succeed.

In the end, you may not win. But in losing you learn so much.

These are character-building experiences, and while they abound in our daily lives, people seem reluctant to experience them because they’re hard, and painful. The result is a generation of people who don’t see the value of loyalty.

I am not criticizing young Mr. Ooten or his parents.

But I am criticizing people who say loyalty to a losing cause has no value.

It does have value, and the fact that so many people don’t recognize that speaks volumes about their character.

This column appeared in the July 3, 2016 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .