The Bates Haunting is one such film that doesnt carry any known actors at all and would probably have never been made five years ago. Regardless of how good the film is (it isnt very good), at least people have the chance to experience it.
The Bates Haunting takes place almost exclusively at a low-budget horror themed hayride built to capture the same horror and feel of the movies. There is nothing really to do with Psycho or the Bates Motel at all other than a similar name and the hayride has some attractions that feel familiar to what was in the movies.
The plot is basic at best with Agnes Rickover (played by Jean Louise O’Sullivan) visiting the hayride only to watch her best friend get cooked to death by an attraction gone wrong. Feeling it was an actual murder and not an accident, Agnes spends the next year moving from job to job and struggling with coping although it is oddly done and she really doesnt seem to be grieving at all. As a last ditch effort to find a job for his daughter and maybe get closer, her sheriff father gets her a job at the hayride only to have things go horribly wrong and co-workers begin to either disappear or get caught in further accidents gone wrong in the attractions.
For some reason thats never explained other than to just have some sort of name recognition, both Bam Margera and the late Ryan Dunn appear in cameos at the beginning. But it comes off completely random and ill placed, almost fooling the viewer into thinking this is supposed to be a horror slapstick comedy instead of a straight slasher which it is.
Thats one of the huge issues with this film, on one hand it wants to be funny and even be slapstick with a character named Junior Bates being an over-lisped half-wit that runs the establishment and whose true intentions you can guess right from the start. But on the other hand, there are gruesome and serious murders happening left and right.
It doesnt help that the acting here is below grade either with some of the reactions to the deaths unintentionally hysterical. While the practical special effects are decent, it doesnt make up for the lame reveal, an extreme lack of anything scary, the struggle between out-of-place slapstick and straight horror and just a general mediocre storyline. Again, some of this can be written off as independent filmmaking but some of the best horror movies are those that arent from major studios. The Bates Haunting is available on VOD now.
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