Silver Screen in a Red Envelope: A Diary of Time Wasted

SPOILER ALERT. ALL THE SPOILERS, ALL THE TIME. I liked this film, not least for the lighting contrasts. I think that mysterious writing under black light is possibly a bit cliched at this point, but I still like it in horror movies. It does strange things to shadows, and this is a film where shadows matter. The story revolves around a young adult living away from her mentally ill mother and her still-dependent younger brother. She must return to her home and the trauma there when the dark thing in the family home begins interfering with her brother's ability to function at school. I wanted the dark thing to be a metaphor, like The Babadook  (2014). I think dark things are meaningful. But the backstory was character-based rather than allegorical. Characters are this film's strong point. The boyfriend was not a tool, and not stupid. The female protagonist was in control, decisive and flawed. I think that all the humans were more or less sympathetic. I *spoiler immediately ...

This horror/comedy about a fraudulent [aren't they all?] and unsuspecting ghost hunting team that is hired to expel a "real" ghost is in fact, one of the [intentionally] funniest haunted house films I have ever seen. I watched and rewatched it - totally unconcerned that easy answers were complicated by light-hearted carelessness rather than deliberate obfuscation that most horror films rely on as a stamp of their dedicated post-modernity in a subgenre that remains stubbornly twentieth-century. The script is witty, the ending ironic, the ghosts just ever-so-slightly slapstick (with the occasional jump scare, because that sort of thing BELONGS in horror/comedy, and not in straight horror). It hits some very comedic notes with each of its anti-heroes as they confront a series of antagonists, living and dead. Anyway, I made my roommates watch it, and they don't like horror. So they didn't like it. But I LOVE scary movies, and this is probably in my top ten favor...