FILM REVIEW: House on Eden (2025)

House on Eden - New Release Review

Director: Kris Collins

Starring: Kris Collins, Celina Myers, Jason-Christopher Mayer, Barb Thomas

Written by: Kris Collins

Produced by: Kris Collins, Celina Myers, Jason-Christopher Mayer

Cinematography by: Jason-Christopher Mayer, Adam Mayer

Synopsis:

Setting out to film their next paranormal investigation, Kris, Celina and Jay encounter a malevolent, ancient spirit that resides in an abandoned house deep in the woods.

Thoughts:

Being very successful Youtubers doesn't always equate to being very successful filmmakers. Not everybody can be the Philippou Brothers. Kris Collins gives it her best shot but sadly her debut feature film is just more generic found footage that struggles to stand out from the crowd.

As a sub genre found footage is really difficult to get right. More often than not, found footage films just follow the same old tropes for the first hour and then we get something interesting that leads to the inevitable "shocking" finale. In 'House on Eden' nothing of note happens at all until the trio get to their destination and that's when it finally picks up a bit of steam.

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Kris Collins specialises in true crime and in 'House on Eden' she recruits her Youtuber mates Celina and Jay to join her on a journey to a haunted cemetery. Except she has a little surprise in store for them. Secretly she has discovered a lesser known urban legend about a mysterious house in the middle of a forest that has a sinister history. Much to the chagrin of Celina and Jay, the trio eventually agree to take a detour and explore the unknown. But will it prove to be a mistake?

'House on Eden' plays out a little bit like a Temu version of 'The Blair Witch Project'. I hate saying that because it sounds like such a cheap comparison but it really was the first thing that came to my mind. I'm not super familiar with Kris and Celina's real life content but it's obvious that they have a real passion for investigative horror. The main difference between this and 'Blair Witch' is that the latter actually made an effort to make the set-up feel important and relevant to the film. I know it's a bit unfair to compare this to such a huge game changer like 'Blair Witch' but dems the rules.

What makes this a little different at least is the fact that each of the three characters are always holding a camera and shooting footage, which means that the footage we are watching is edited from three sources. It makes it a little more interesting than your standard found footage affair but it also means that there's a lot of cutting back and forth from camera to camera which gets annoying.

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The plot isn't particularly a stand out and there's very little scares to write home about. However when the trio get into the haunted house I think Kris Collins, who wrote and directed the film, does a pretty good job at keeping our attention even if it doesn't quite make sense. Kris, Celina and Jason all give good performances but I couldn't help but feel like there was something missing. It's hard to put my finger on it even as the film creeped into its finale.

As low budget indie found footage horror films go, this isn't the worse by a long shot but it does little in the way of originality and as a sub genre it's incredibly difficult to be original these days. There's lots of "what's that noise" and "I thought I saw something" early on in the build up as they make their way through the forest to the house and that just doesn't cut it anymore. As mentioned earlier when they arrive at the house and begin to actually investigate, it becomes more interesting and there's more opportunities to explore tension and scares. There's a scene where all 3 of them have a falling out because Kris has become hard to work with and I would have liked to have seen more of this or something compelling involving the character dynamics.

If you follow Kris or Celina on any of their social media platforms then you'll likely eat this up. But if you're not familiar with them as people then this will probably just be another forgettable found footage film. Kris and Celina have a lot of screen presence and energy. Their charisma and chemistry is evident early on and the film had it's moments but the story just isn't appealing enough.

Verdict: ⭐️⭐️½

-Gavin Logan

'House of Eden' is available to stream on Shudder from September 26th