Some horror films sneak up behind you quietly, whisper “boo,” and disappear into the night. Haunts is not one of those films. No—Haunts crawls into your subconscious, rearranges the furniture, hides your car keys, and leaves you wondering whether ghosts, repressed trauma, or simply terrible rural California living is the villain.
Directed by Herb Freed, Haunts is a low-budget psychological horror tale that feels like it was filmed inside a fever dream brought on by existential dread and too much Lutheran guilt. On paper, it’s a murder mystery about young women being stabbed with scissors in a small town. In practice, it’s a disorienting descent into sexual repression, religious pressure, fractured memory, and good old-fashioned small-town paranoia where everyone is suspicious and everyone drinks like prohibition ends tomorrow.
It’s a movie that shouldn’t work—but does, weirdly, because it leans so hard into its own foggy madness.
Meet Ingrid Svensen: The World’s Unluckiest Choir Girl
May Britt plays Ingrid, a fragile Swedish farm girl who sings in the church choir, tends goats, and gets assaulted so many times throughout the film it starts to feel like the universe is sending her very personalized hate mail. She lives with her uncle Carl (Cameron Mitchell), who looks like the human equivalent of a warning pamphlet.
A young girl is killed in town by a masked figure with scissors. Ingrid sings a hymn and tries to mind her own business.
Then she’s attacked by a masked figure on the road. She escapes.
A woman named Nell gets murdered nearby. Ingrid discovers the body on her farm.
You know, typical week.
Trauma? Memory? Hallucination? Why Not All Three?
Unlike most slashers, Haunts isn’t interested in giving you a clear villain. It wants you to doubt everyone—and most cruelly, it wants you to doubt Ingrid herself.
Her assault on the road triggers repressed memories:
– her father molesting her
– her mother committing suicide
– her childhood collapsing like wet cardboard
These flashes are fragmented and distorted, making the film’s narrative feel like you’re watching it through a broken window. It’s unsettling, but effective. The real horror isn’t the killer with scissors—it’s Ingrid’s own mind, running a one-woman demolition derby.
Enter the Parade of Men Who Absolutely Don’t Help
In typical 1970s fashion (both clothing and misogyny), the men of Haunts contribute absolutely nothing except stress.
Bill Spry—the Choir Lurker
Bill is new to town, sings in the choir, and behaves like a man whose hobbies include lurking outside windows and doing crimes. Naturally, Ingrid avoids him, and naturally, the police seem uncertain whether that avoidance is suspicious or good judgement.
Sheriff Peterson—the Walking Red Flag
Played by Aldo Ray, the sheriff is the kind of man who expresses concern by yelling and expresses anger by yelling louder. He is investigating the murders, but with the energy of someone who just wants to go home and drink something regrettable.
Frankie—the Butcher Who Should Be in Jail for Existing
Frankie is a butcher. A rapist. A psychopath. The kind of man who would follow a woman home, break in, and sexually assault her in the shower.
And, in this film, he does exactly that.
Or does he?
Ingrid experiences a brutal, horrifying rape scene where Frankie attacks her. Carl even returns home mid-assault but doesn’t notice—because men in Haunts possess the situational awareness of a concussed possum.
Frankie threatens Ingrid. Shows up at church. Tries to attack her again. And yet…the sheriff later reveals there was no physical evidence Frankie was ever there. Ingrid’s autopsy later reveals—chillingly—that she died a virgin.
Which means everything involving Frankie may be Ingrid’s hallucination.
Or maybe not.
The film keeps you guessing right until the corpse hits the floor—literally.
A Murderer Found… Sort Of… Maybe… Somehow
After another attack, police chase a masked assailant around town and gun him down at a sawmill. When unmasked, the killer is revealed to be Bill Spry.
Great! Case closed!
Except…nothing adds up.
Because this film isn’t a police procedural—it’s a psychological jigsaw puzzle that’s missing half the pieces and possibly stuffed some in your shoe.
The Climax: Ingrid, Frankie, Fire Pokes, and the Unraveling of Everything
Frankie returns to the farm, binds Carl, attacks Ingrid (again?), and gets stabbed by her with a fire poker. Ingrid flees to the sheriff to explain everything.
But here’s the kicker:
Frankie isn’t dead. Frankie walks into the farm the next morning.
Even the sheriff looks confused, as if the script rewrote itself overnight.
As Peterson investigates the property, evidence begins to contradict Ingrid’s entire reality. Deputies find something buried in a shallow grave—but it’s not a body.
It’s Ingrid’s goat.
This is the moment the film whips off its mask Scooby-Doo style and says, “Surprise! This was trauma all along!”
Sheriff Peterson finds Ingrid dead—suicide. The tragedy is complete.
But the mystery is not.
The Final Revelation: Carl Breaks the Fourth Wall of Madness
At Ingrid’s funeral, Carl appears older, exhausted, ghost-like. The sheriff explains that Ingrid’s attacks from Frankie were hallucinations; the evidence didn’t match the crimes she described.
Carl quietly admits something worse:
He hasn’t visited Ingrid in a very long time.
Meaning the Ingrid we saw interacting with Carl may not have been interacting with him at all.
Carl returns to the farmhouse. Steps into the bathroom. The room fills with steam. And Ingrid’s ghostly reflection appears behind him.
It’s ambiguous.
It’s eerie.
It’s either supernatural or symbolic—or both, because Haunts commits to weirdness like it’s a sacred oath.
Why It Works: A Low-Budget Mind-Mess With Unexpected Power
Haunts isn’t polished. It isn’t fast-paced. It doesn’t have slick kills or sexy teens making stupid decisions. What it doeshave is:
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haunting atmosphere
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fractured, dreamlike editing
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a quiet rural bleakness
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subtle supernatural undertones
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genuine psychological unease
It’s horror not as spectacle, but as disorientation—like driving through fog at night and seeing shapes that might be trees or might be something else entirely.
It’s a film where scissors are terrifying not because they stab, but because they represent the cutting-apart of memory, identity, and reality.
And the ending? It doesn’t offer closure. Because trauma rarely does.
Final Verdict: A Strange, Somber, Beautifully Disturbing Gem
Haunts is a small film with big psychological shadows. It’s not here to thrill you with slashers or dazzle you with gore—it’s here to unsettle you, confuse you, whisper half-truths in your ear, and leave you wondering whether Ingrid was haunted by a killer or by her own damaged psyche.
It’s bleak. It’s bizarre. It’s unexpectedly emotional.
And it’s absolutely worth watching if you enjoy horror that crawls under your skin and makes itself at home.
A dark rural fairy tale.
A fractured memory in film form.
A haunting that lingers long after the credits.
Haunts doesn’t scare you.
It haunts you—just like its title promises.
