I’m all for more horror movies that are set on or around Halloween, but there should be more behind it. Despite the inclusion of Celtic folklore and Halloween mythology, Paul Ernest’s horror thriller is a bust. There’s a good concept behind “Archaon: The Halloween Summoning.” It’s just that the movie itself does absolutely nothing with it. It’s a horror movie that basks in its glacial pacing and paper thin, unlikable characters.
Jackson (Josh Scherer) has just ordered a Halloween costume in the form of an ancient 15th century Celtic mask that’s so authentic that it comes with instructions that he and his buddy Pete (Christopher Dalton) ignore. Jackson’s overbearing brother Nolan (Garrett Miller) decides to throw a Halloween party, where he intends to invite his crush Sara (Sarah Zanotti). Despite weird hallucinations, and some mysterious legends behind the mask, the events elevate when they throw their annual Halloween party, coincidentally, the night when the evil spirit threatens to be resurrected. D’oh!
A movie like this could really elicit some serious terror, especially in how it delves in to ancient Halloween lore, but Paul Ernest can never seem to deliver a good enough pay off. The mystery is anemic, and I didn’t give two squats about anyone facing off against this weird artifact. Oddly enough none of the characters are never in any real danger, despite being informed over and over that Archaon is a “powerful demon.” Weirdly, director Ernest has a great time making use of “The Inception’s” sound “Braaam!”, setting it off almost every minute, as a means of eliciting mock suspense, setting the sound effect off any moment that he wants the audience to be scared.
It’s almost like a Pavlov exercise: “Braaaam!” Oh something bad’s going to happen! It not only gets exhausting very quickly, but it’s patently lazy. Speaking of lazy, one of the main elements of the narrative is that the mask, when put on, warps you in to another world. Director Ernest completely rips off “Stranger Things” wholesale, as characters are transported in to a menacing mirror world called “The In-Between.” Ernest doesn’t even shy away from the obvious inspiration, as the “In-Between” even looks like a low rent version of “The Upside Down.” As for Archaon, it is dull like most of the film.
There’s no real menace or sense of urgency and the monster only appears sporadically to frighten Jackson, who responds by screeching like a house cat. The monster we see advertised on the film’s poster is not even present, with the villain looking more like a scarecrow demon prop from Party City. The only thing of consequence that happens is one character dies, and funnily enough, it’s the only minority character with zero lines of dialogue. He literally shows up to the Halloween party (filled with obvious thirty somethings playing college students) to die. Ernest could have also gone over the film a few more times during editing as the sound is awful.
One moment finds Jackson explaining to character Sara what it feels like to wear the mask, and the audio inexplicably lowers to where we can barely make out what they’re discussing. This is an error that really should have been corrected in the final stages. “Archaon” is a stale, tedious genre entry.