House (2008)

THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED J.P. Davis (left) and Heidi Dippold in House, which is haunted mostly by its need to explain everything

If you believe that the most terrifying part of a horror film is the backstory (you know, that jittery quick-cut flashback in which we discover how the psycho became a psycho), then House is the tingler for you. It starts off as your basic two-couples-stranded-in-a-house-owned-by-a-family-of-redneck-bizarros Chainsaw facsimile, but then the haunted rooms begin to provoke extended visions of Sins From the Past. The backstories keep piling up, with nods to The Shining, The Ring, and a dozen other gothic supernatural chillers, yet the result doesn't remotely scare you — rather, it keeps explaining why you should be scared. That's why we're not. D