Fridae

You may not know the “true story” that An American Haunting is based on, but practically anyone who has seen at least one haunted house/demonic possession movie in their lifetime will be able to predict what will happen in this film, way before it happens.

A clunky flashback device is used to introduce the main story: a girl is chased by unseen spirits in the woods back to her home, where she then sees a spirit that looks her age, before stumbling on some papers in the attic. As she is being terrorised, her mother begins to read the papers, which recounts a haunting that occurred in the same house almost 150 years before...

It is obvious director Courtney Solomon has borrowed generously from demonic possession and haunted house movies of the past, tapping into a reservoir of cliches that are used without reservation. The plot also makes no advancement from the start of the flashback till the very end of the movie, where a “shock ending” plays out (that simply isn't very shocking), and the middle simply being rehashes of the same theme over and over and over again. Yes we get it — the place is haunted, need we be subject to an hour of proving the same point ad nauseum? And to add insult to injury, the explanation at the end of the film is too simple and fails to address many issues that played out prior to the conclusion. In short, a very unsatisfying horror film.