Director: Adam Ethan Crow

Writer: Adam Ethan Crow

Starring: Corey Johnson, Emily Haigh, Aislinn De’Ath and Alana Wallace

Rating: ★½

This year has been such a great year for horror fans. So many great ones that will go down as classics. Quite a few truly original and fresh ideas and then there’s Lair. A film that premiered at this years FrightFest, that probably shouldn’t have even been made in the first place.

This is such a terrible film. It’s full of clichés and tropes. The story barely makes sense, the twist at the end is just stupid. The characters don’t act like people. The acting is atrocious, and the dialogue is appalling. The only redeeming thing about it is that it’s so bad it’s funny, but that’s not enough to warrant watching this trash.

From the first line of dialogue spoken you know this isn’t going to be a good film. The acting is atrocious, and the writing is unbelievably bad and there are so many lines that will make you laugh. There’s a teddy bear who features prominently who does a better job at acting than any of the actual characters.

The biggest problem is that no one acts like humans. Steven Caramore (Corey Johnson) is a sceptic who makes money by conning people who believe in the paranormal. His friend Ben is imprisoned after brutally killing his family, his defence being that he was possessed. Steven dismisses this instantly, then sees a way to make money out of it so sets up a room to rent out to tourists that he can leave possessed and haunted objects in to see if they have any effect on the tourists. He flip flops from sceptic to believer, but somehow spends most of the film not believing. It’s stupid and just plain bad writing.

The family then lose their youngest daughter, when Steven left a haunted doll that the youngest becomes attached to and then he catches up with them on the street to take it back as it hasn’t had any effect. The daughter runs off causing a panic and Steven just leaves. He later turns up at the flat and offers a teddy bear to apologise. It’s strange that they felt comfortable staying there. The next day they come back and find Steven and his co-worker acting suspiciously leaving a trail of salt at the front door. They shout at them, telling them to leave, but still leave the two children in the flat alone knowing Steven can come back at any point.

There is nothing scary about what happens. The effects are horrendous and laughable at points and there is no real attempt to build terror. At the end when everything kicks off, it shows you the fallout before switching back to show you what happened. It leaves no tension, because you just saw the ending. Then the twist happens, which makes no sense at all and is there just to be shocking, but doesn’t do anything worth being there, other than padding out an already boring, dull, pointless film.

One of the plot points revolves around objects being haunted. Why does it only effect the family who are on holiday? Before the events, the haunted objects are in a storage locked in plastic tubs. Why aren’t they effecting people at the storage facility, the workers or over locker renters? Why doesn’t it effect Stephen who moves them around to try and get a reaction from the family? At the end when it’s being sold off at an auction (Spoiler alert, but just don’t watch it instead), the statue isn’t being held in any casing, it’s just on the table. Surely they would all be effected in the room?

Lair is an awful uninspired horror film that is a tiresome experience to sit through. The writing is appalling and the acting does it no favours. Avoid this at all costs.