Made by real-world social media influencers, this “found-footage” horror pic is packed with Blair Witch-like thump-in-the-night stuff. The cultish creepiness, nudity, spiritually twisted worldview, throat-slashing goo and profanely foul dialogue—all delivered with TikToker gusto—will leave viewers swiping for better entertainment choices.
Kris and Celina are always looking for the next creepy place to visit and film. Cemeteries. Dilapidated houses. Weird caves. Ancient churches. Overgrown shacks in the woods. You never know where you might find (or perhaps manufacture?) some good paranormal content with which to feed the ever-hungry social media beast.
Today, Celina and cameraman Jay think they’re going to an abandoned graveyard. But Kris has something special in store. She’s taking them to a house that she heard about out in the middle of nowhere. There’s no road to it. No town nearby.
It’s a deserted home with no power and no evidence of anyone inhabiting it in ages. But here’s the thing: the place is spotlessly clean. When they walk in through the unlocked door there are paintings on the walls, books on the shelves, dolls sitting in chairs, and not a trace of dust or grime.
Oh, and there’s a great story linked to this place. They say a girl went missing here some 60 years ago. And that’s some juicy stuff that this creative trio can build on. The kind of mysterious details that’ll have their followers jumping out of their skin.
Of course, there are also odd screams coming from the woods, strange thumps on doors and walls. And even if it’s some stupid fox in the woods or a rat between the walls, it’s perfect for Kris’ needs. This house will generate lots of great content.
She can feel it.
It’s only when things start feeling a little weird, though, and Kris begins to feel sick to her stomach, that they all agree that maybe they should hike back to the van and sleep there for the night. But when the trio awakens the next morning on the floor of the house, they realize that they must have passed out at the same time and never made it to the front door.
Maybe there’s really something spooky going on in this creepy but spotless old house. Something must have knocked them out cold to keep them in here.
And if that’s true … how do they get out?
The trio of friends—Kris, Celina and their cameraman, Jay—appears to know each other well. And at first, they’re protective of one another.
During her exploration of the house, Kris finds the name Lilith written above a door. She later spots a painting in the house depicting Lilith: a naked woman with a serpent wrapped about her body. She looks up the name and finds a Jewish folklore story of a “demonic, raven-haired succubus” who steals the seed of sleeping men. (It’s lightly implied that she was Adam’s first wife, crafted before Eve.)
An elderly woman (perhaps a specter of some sort) appears in a bedroom and later takes control of someone’s prone body. That possessed individual then walks out and joins what appears to be a coven surrounding a roaring bonfire. (More on that below in Sexual and Violence sections.)
A young woman falls into a trance and begins chanting in Latin. The woman’s voice is then duplicated with a demonic sounding male voice. There are growling and screaming voices heard in the night, as well as loud thumps on walls and doors.
Kris and Celina set up special devices to communicate with the spirits. One such device is called an Alice Box that helps the spirit entities speak out loud. We hear a spirit give one-word responses such as “here” and “corner” when asked questions. Another similar contraption, called a cat ball, lights up and sparkles whenever someone or something moves nearby. Doors open and close on their own. Celina purposely puts herself in a trance-like state so that a spirit may speak through her.
A disabled woman stares at Kris and recognizes that she’s pregnant.
As mentioned above, the painting of Lilith shows a naked young woman with bared breasts, who is covered in other key areas by an entwining snake’s body. Later we see a fully naked older woman with no coverings at all. A young woman joins a group of people, and they remove her clothes. We see her naked form from the upper chest up.
Jay, the cameraman, shoots a close-up shot of Kris’ stretch pants-clad backside as they walk through the woods. And Celina later argues with Jay, noting that he wouldn’t say or do some things around Kris because of his attraction to her. Later in the movie Kris declares she’s pregnant.
As Kris, Celina and Jay drive into isolated areas, they crudely joke about family incest that takes place there.
The above-mentioned older Lilith kneels beside a prone, unconscious figure and slashes open her own neck with a knife; gore spills down on that unconscious individual.
When Celina is shaken awake from a trance, she lashes out and punches Jay in the face, giving him a bloody nose. Kris falls over on the stairs, and her friends find her unconscious on the floor. At one point, Kris approaches Celina, who appears to be in a trance. And Celina is absent mindedly picking at a huge open wound on her arm. A ghostly figure grabs Kris and shoves her beneath dirty water in a full bathtub.
We see quick shots of several seemingly dead people on the ground; their clothes covered in blood.
About 90 f-words and more than 40 s-words salt the dialogue. They’re joined by multiple uses of “b–ch,” “a–hole” and “h—.” There are 15 total misuses of God’s and Jesus’ names. Among those are one pairing of God’s name with “d–n,” and one misuse of Jesus’ name with an f-word.
Someone makes a crude reference to oral sex. A person spits out the c-word as an insult. An individual flashes an offensive hand gesture.
Jay smokes a cigarette.
Celina sets up a collapsible “s–tshack” that she sits in to relieve herself. Kris looks in at her while she’s using it and then Celina exits with a plastic baggy full of waste. Kris vomits repeatedly, but realizes that there’s no water for the toilets or sinks. Kris badmouths Jay’s ability to do his job.
Kris Collins and Celina Myers are real-world social media content creators; better known as Kallmekris and CelinaSpookyBoo, respectively. And with this, uh, stab at making a horror movie, they’re hoping to parlay their collective 80 million TikTok, YouTube and Instagram followers into a ticket-buying movie fanbase.
Their film, written and directed by Collins, is a found-footage horror pic about YouTube paranormal investigators. But frankly, House on Eden has all the amateur earmarks of something you might expect from a TikTok-making crew. This pic’s bare-bones, shaking-camera vibe may have worked with 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, but we’ve been there and done that many times since.
I will offer cudos to Collins, who’s able to kick her performance up a notch in this format. Once it’s clear that the whole thing isn’t supposed to be a straight-up spoof, she comes off as the most capable horror actor in this small cast.
That said, the f-word laden dialogue (reportedly improvised) is stupefyingly tedious. And the derivative creep scenes that the actors cuss their way through—that weave in dark spirituality and throat-slashing ick—are more off-putting than compelling. Add in graphic nudity as well as a spiritual worldview that both borrows from a biblical story and badly distorts it, and what we’re left with is indeed a long way from Eden.
My final assessment? Swipe left.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
