I Seriously Thought This Film Was A Comedy

Seriously. My daughter was watching it when I walked into the room and I was mildly interested because it seemed somewhat humorous. The characters were silly cliches with horrible acting. There was the crazy girl with the weird dreams and shreiky voice. That guy with the cigarette always dangling from his mouth. The crazy old lady that kept dodging their questions. They were ALL parodies. And all the "scary" set-ups were so lame, like the cat in the basement and the idiot who was checking to see if the electricity was working by using a nailgun (I mean, would it have been too much to try a lightswitch instead of a powertool??). I thought for sure this was a comedy, and not even a subtle one. It was like one of those Scary Movies, but with a lower budget.

And so I kept watching, expecting for it to keep getting funnier, and for the humor envelope to continue being pushed open and that maybe I'd get some real laughs out of it. And don't get me wrong, my daughter and I certainly got some laughs, but none of the intended variety. It just continued to get more and more dreadful, and the only fear I experienced was the growing realization that these people were serious and that the lameness was unintentional.

And even after the end of the movie, I STILL wasn't convinced that it was serious, so I came on here to IMDB to see if perhaps it was a comedy that just didn't go far enough. But no, it appears this was meant to be serious. I just can't believe it. I mean, that ending was absolutely the worst. It truly looks as if they realized they were way over-budget and decided to improvise the "climax" on the final day of shooting, without having finished the rest of the movie. Hell, they spent TONS of time early on focusing on stupid stuff like scary cats and spooky sounds, and then entirely skipped the murder of two main characters. I repeat, they skipped murders! What is wrong with these people?

And even now, I keep hoping this film was intended as a joke, and that they just didn't know how to push things far enough. Or that they fell behind schedule and realized they didn't have time to make a cleverish parody and decided to go with straight horror film. That'd make me feel better than to think that people actually spent time and money to make a horror film without any real clue how to make a horror film. I know that's often the case, but they're usually not so incompetent as this one was.

So am I the only one who thinks this? Or is this perhaps a comedy that just didn't go far enough?