Ghost Team One (2013)

"Two roommates deathly afraid of ghosts both fall in love with a girl who believes their home is haunted."

I don't know why everyone is calling "Ghost Team One" a "comedy". It isn't funny, and it doesn't even have a particularly happy ending. What it does have is lots of awkwardness and the same atmosphere as the American version of "The Office" (which also isn't funny), and of course, a hot chick (or two) to ogle.

"Ghost Team One" is essentially another completely unneccessary "Paranormal Activity" parody which brings the number of such abominations up to an unlucky 13. How and why this has become a subgenre in itself is undoutedly due to the YouTube generation who can't seem to get enough of webcams, shakycams, and mediocrity. For those of us who prefer a real movie, these faux found footage movies are mostly an annoying waste of time.

There are a couple of neat effects in "Ghost Team One" which you don't often see in a glorified YouTube video like this, but it isn't a horror movie by any stretch of the imagination either. In fairness, though, I don't think it was ever intended to be. It's not "found footage horror" per se that this movie is lampooning but the whole "amateur-looking footage" subgenre in general. Even YouTube gets targetted!

The downfall with this, however, is that "Ghost Team One" is as tame as its targets when it comes to the adult situations: Punches are pulled everywhere, e.g. pornographic images on a bedroom wall are pixellated, and the "jokes" (if you can call them that) are little more than schoolboyish. Think Benny Hill but less creepy with it. For a movie which uses the promise of "horny ghosts" as its selling point (especially as the only ghost in it is supposed to have been a Vietnamese prostitute!), it's very disappointing.

Two guys I've never heard of and Fernanda Romero.

As I have no sense of humour when it comes to comedy-horror movies, spoofs or otherwise, I hate to say it, but I was slightly entertained by "Ghost Team One" in a low-rent "Men Behaving Badly" (British version, naturally) way. It's well written, the drama is nicely done, and the characters are stupidly amiable but harmless enough. Once you get used to the awful camerawork, the whole purpose of "Ghost Team One" is only an excuse to lust over Fernanda Romero anyway. If Fernanda wasn't in it, I doubt that I would have made it to the end.

Fernanda Romero (who keeps her real first name and clothes on throughout) steals every scene she's in to such an extent that "Ghost Team One" is best described as her "vehicle". If anyone else involved in this movie is deluded enough to think otherwise, they need to grab themselves a reality check next time they go to 7-Eleven for their taquitos and slushies, and understand that, apart from a few infantilised adults (who were born in the '80s and '90s) and their friends, the majority of people who will eventually buy this movie on DVD or Blu-ray are just going to skip to the parts with Fernanda in and crack open another box of tissues. Yes, she really is that hot!

Putting the novelty value of "Ghost Team One" as a "latino" movie aside, since I often tend to overrate any kind of Spanish or Mexican movie even when they are filmed in Los Angeles, I don't recommend this one. I'll give everybody credit for having a go, but "Ghost Team One" would have been better as a series of webisodes.

Fernanda Romero is the centre of attention.

A Haunted House (2013)

"Malcolm and Kisha move into their dream home, but soon learn a demon also resides there. When Kisha becomes possessed, Malcolm - determined to keep his sex life on track - turns to a priest, a psychic, and a team of ghost-busters for help."

Apart from Marlon Wayans, I've never heard of anybody in "A Haunted House". Actually, that's not entirely true. I also recognised David Koechner but couldn't place or name him until I looked him up on the IMDb. For those of you who also wonder, he was in "Final Destination 5" and "Snakes on a Plane' (which, ironically, is referred to later on).

Not knowing the cast of a theatrical movie is sometimes not a bad thing depending on the subject matter. As long as it's a real movie, you can assume that the actors have been in TV shows or other movies rather than being complete unknowns who don't know what they are doing. If this had been a straight-to-DVD movie, different rules would apply. When you haven't heard of anybody in a backyard "indie horror", for instance, it's definitely a huge warning sign that it will be a bad one.

Having said that, I wasn't expecting a lot from "A Haunted House" either. I hate horror-comedies with a passion, and I've never found any parodies which hit their targets successfully apart from the first "Airplane". I always give every movie a chance to entertain me (otherwise I wouldn't watch them), but I knew the chances would be very slim that I would get anything out of this one.

With great trepidation, I ventured into the uncharted territory of "A Haunted House", and it soon became obvious that all my suspicions were correct. While the parodies of the first three "Paranormal Activity" movies, "The Entity" and "The Exorcist" are almost perfect, none of them are funny.

Maybe it's because the "black American culture" references which are uncomfortably forced in are clichéd and outdated, or maybe it's just because the comic timing and delivery is off, but apart from the dog getting killed at the beginning (and its drawn out aftermath), I didn't crack a smile at anything else once. Dogs disgust me so put it down (no pun intended) to my own callousness that made me grin.

I liked how the various effects were copied so well from the parodied movies. I also recognised every scene including the quick nods to "Insidious", "The Blair Witch Project" and "[REC]". The thing is, I didn't think they were amusing even with all the sex jokes and toilet humour thrown on top of them. I'm no prude, it's just that such humour is feeble and too puerile in ways that only a tame American movie can truly make a mess of them. Ouside of stand-up comedians, American comedy doesn't travel well anyway.

The bottom line is "A Haunted House" looks the part, Essence Atkins is very talented as Kisha (especially when acting possessed), but the "comedy" is a waste of 80 minutes which you'll never get back.