Haunted by Potential
Somewhere inside Hauntology there’s a fantastic movie clawing at the coffin lid. Unfortunately, what actually staggers out is a well-meaning, queer, road-trip horror anthology that’s so in love with its own concept it forgets to be, you know, consistently good.
Parker Brennon’s feature debut sells itself as a “queer horror road trip” anthology: older sister Jazmin drags runaway 12-year-old Venus around their Ohio hometown, telling ghost stories tied to spooky local landmarks. Each stop is a new tale, each tale supposedly reflects something about Venus, and everything is meant to build into a big emotional and supernatural payoff.
On paper, that’s a killer hook. In practice, it’s like being promised a haunted tasting menu and getting four half-finished appetizers and a long lecture about vibes.
The Anthology That Forgot the Anthology Magic
Anthologies live or die on three things:
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strong segments,
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a satisfying wraparound,
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the feeling that it all adds up to more than the sum of the parts.
Hauntology mostly whiffs all three.
Even one of the more positive-leaning genre sites admits they were “disappointed, and incredibly frustrated” that the film “misses the chance to truly freshen up the subgenre” and doesn’t seem to understand what makes portmanteau horror sparkle.
The segments vary wildly in tone and impact. You get:
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a witchy bit with a cool monster,
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a Victorian-flavored haunting,
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some social-injustice ghosting,
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and a finale that wants to be emotionally devastating but lands closer to “mid-season streaming episode.”
There’s no real escalation of dread, just a sequence of “now this happens” stories stitched together by car rides and exposition. It’s like a horror version of those childhood road trips where your parents point out landmarks and you pretend to care.
Venus and Jazmin: Great Setup, Weak Engine
The wraparound should be the film’s secret weapon:
Venus (Jaidyn Triplett) is running away from messy parents and her own identity struggles, and Jazmin (Samantha Russell) catches up and bargains: listen to my hometown stories first, and if you still want to leave, we go.
That’s such a smart emotional anchor—sisterly love, family trauma, queer identity, all filtered through ghost stories. Some critics even single out Venus as a compelling young queer protagonist whose arc ties the whole thing together.
The problem is that the movie keeps telling us these tales matter deeply to Venus but rarely showing it. Her reactions are often limited to “spooked” or “thoughtful,” and the links between each story and her life can feel more like a PowerPoint theme than an organic connection:
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Story 1: Here’s a witch.
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Story 2: Here’s oppression.
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Story 3: Here’s family secrets.
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Story 4: Anyway, are you emotionally transformed yet?
By the time the wraparound tries to cash out all the emotional checks it’s been writing, it feels less like catharsis and more like a rushed group project presentation.
Tales from the Meh Side
Most anthology films are at least fun in a roulette way—you sit there going “good, bad, good, terrible, oh that one ruled.” Hauntology doesn’t really commit to that rollercoaster. It settles into a safe midzone where even the good ideas feel dulled by pacing and repetition.
Reviews frequently praise one of the early segments for a “genuinely creepy monster” and a strong Naomi Grossman supporting turn. You can feel the movie briefly wake up, remember it’s a horror film, and throw some actual menace at the screen.
Then we’re back in another fairly talky, emotionally over-explained vignette, where themes of injustice and discrimination are spelled out like the world’s most haunted diversity training. SciFiNow, which actually likes the film overall, still frames it as more of an allegorical essay about oppression and identity than a straight scarefest.
That’s great if you came for a spooky seminar on hauntology (Derrida would be proud). Less great if you came for, you know, horror.
Queer, Yes. Coherent, Not So Much.
To its credit, Hauntology is unapologetically queer. Brennon themselves has said the film is very specifically “for the queer community,” and it centers a young Black queer girl and a cast of queer characters in ways mainstream horror still often dodges.
That representation matters. It genuinely does. The problem is that somewhere along the line, the movie starts to behave like representation is a substitute for narrative clarity and tonal control.
We get ghosts of injustice, ancestral trauma, queer self-acceptance, Catholic dread, Americana, road-trip nostalgia, and a dash of folk horror. All worthy ingredients. But they’re thrown together in a way that sometimes feels less like a recipe and more like a fridge clean-out.
Even some genre fans sympathetic to its aims have gently noted that while the film “offers something for every genre fan,” it also has a “slow start” and structural issues that keep it from really taking off.
It’s the horror equivalent of a zine: full of heart, politically sharp, kind of a mess.
Style vs. Substance vs. Run Time
Visually, the movie’s fine. It’s not ugly, but it’s rarely striking enough to distract you when the storytelling sags. The 103–105 minute runtime, though? You feel every minute.
Cryptic Rock’s review nails it: the fear may ramp up as the anthology progresses, and the finale may get blood-spattered, but it “does not help the movie’s slow start.”
Even worse, IMDb users—who will happily give a possession sequel a 6 if it has three good kills—have this sitting at a 3.7/10. That’s “accidentally watched the wrong Asylum movie” territory, not “festival-lauded queer horror” territory.
There’s an interesting dissonance here: some critics and festival audiences are describing Hauntology as “stunning,” “clever,” and “haunting,” while a big chunk of regular viewers seem to be sitting in the dark muttering, “Wait, that’s it?”
It’s entirely possible this will become one of those divisive cult objects adored by a niche and shrugged off by everyone else. Which is very on-brand for something called Hauntology, to be honest.
Great Cast, Half-Used
The supporting cast is stacked with genre talent:
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Samantha Robinson from The Love Witch,
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Naomi Grossman of American Horror Story fame,
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Nancy Kyes (Loomis!) from Halloween,
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Zoey Luna from The Craft: Legacy.
They bring gravitas and weirdness to their respective stories, but the anthology format—and the script’s tendency to treat everyone as a metaphor first, person second—means they rarely get the space to fully shine. It’s like inviting a bunch of cult icons to your party and then seating them at the kids’ table.
Jaidyn Triplett, as Venus, does anchor things emotionally as best she can, and some reviews call out her performance specifically as a highlight. But there’s only so much an actor can do when the movie keeps cutting away to yet another conceptually Important but dramatically lukewarm story.
Final Diagnosis: Ghosted by Its Own Promise
Hauntology wants to be a queer, emotionally rich, politically aware reinvention of the horror anthology—a spooky mixtape about identity, injustice, and the stories that haunt us. And in moments, you can see that movie. A creature design here, a performance there, a thematic flourish that actually lands.
But as a whole, it feels like the film is more interested in being about horror than in actually delivering it. It’s smart, yes. It’s earnest, absolutely. It’s also shapeless, sluggish, and a little too pleased with its own cleverness.
If you’re an anthology die-hard, a queer horror completist, or a Parker Brennon fan in the making, it’s worth a watch—if only to see where they go from here. For everyone else?
Let’s just say this: as an exploration of “the spectral remnants of the past,” Hauntology is appropriately ghost-like. It flickers in, makes a noise, hints at unfinished business… and then quietly vanishes, leaving you wondering if you actually saw anything at all.
