It's come to a point on the home video market that direct-to-DVD sequels of recognizable movies have become pretty commonplace. Universal's been doing it for years (how else do you explain six American Pie movies and, more than I wish to remember, Bring It On follow-ups?) and other companies have begun to jump on the bandwagon as well. Into the fray comes Warner Brothers who, under their Warner Premiere banner, have unleashed Return To House On Haunted Hill, a sequel to 1999's pretty decent remake of the William Castle original.

After a credit sequence that's all quick cuts of images of surgical nastiness and a doctor getting his at the hands of his patients we're introduced to magazine editor Ariel (Amanda Righetti), who has been too wrapped up in her work to acknowledge multiple desperate sounding phone messages from her estranged sister. At the same time, Dr. Richard Hammer (Steven Pacey) is giving a lecture about the history of a Baphomet idol, which he has been trying to locate for years.

When Amanda gets a phone call that her sister has committed suicide she decides to go to her apartment to try and figure out what she was so frantic about dragging along her photographer boyfriend Paul (Tom Riley) with her. The movie gets it's first decent shock moment when Amanda has a vision of her sister coming towards her with part of her head blown-off by a gun and not long after the good doctor Hammer also shows-up to explain to our couple that he was working with Amanda's sister (who was one of the survivors of the first movie) to locate the idol as she had come into possession of the journal of Dr. Vannacutt (Jeffrey Combs, reprising his role from the original) that may just contain the location of said artifact.

Turns out there's other people after the idol as well as Desmond (Erik Palladino) and his gang of hired muscle stage a home invasion on Amanda's apartment taking her and Paul hostage so they can head out to Vannacutt's old stomping grounds, which just so happens to be the Hill House of the original, to try and find it. Things get even antsier though when Hammer and some of his students also arrive at the house with the same intention in mind.

The rest of Return To House On Haunted Hill follows our cast members, as they are quickly picked-off one-by-bloody-one by the tortured spirits that inhabit the house and are looking for revenge for all the dastardly deeds Vannacutt performed on them within the dwelling when he ran an asylum out of it and experimented on them. This gives scripter William Massa and director Victor Garcia plenty of opportunity for not only some impressive gore set pieces but also to pepper the movie with flashback scenes that shows us why the spirits in the house are so damn pissed-off.

Under Garcia's energetic direction the viewer never really gets much of a chance to think about the story much but that turns out to be okay as the simple premise (which generally rehashes the first film's plot) is really just there to give the makers a chance to make a what amounts to a haunted house movie just in time for the Halloween season. There's a whole slew of impressive bloodshed on hand as various cast members have their guts ripped out, are pulled in half, and even fall victim to the good doctor himself (as witnessed by one kick-ass death at the hands of a scalpel), it gets in the skin quotient with a scene involving lesbian ghosts, and everything moves quickly enough with a short enough running time that this never wears out its welcome.

It's really surprising that there is so much gruesomeness in a movie coming from a major Hollywood studio but I'm not complaining at all as I waited for the next creative demise to hit the screen. The effects work here is great and, with the exception of the weak fire spirits in the finale, is a good mix of practical and CG methods. This isn't a movie about subtle scares; this is a movie about blood, blood, and more blood - which it delivers tenfold.

Unfortunately, the presence of genre favourite Combs (who looks the part of a mad doctor all gaunt and moustached) doesn't pan out the way we'd of liked it to as he wasn't really given enough screen time for my liking. The rest of the cast is generally fine with Andrew Lee Potts offering okay comic relief as sarcastic student Kyle, though Palladino's constant smirk seems too much at times. The only real weak link in the cast turns out to be Cerina Vincent, who a lot of people have been trying to peg as a modern day "scream queen" since she made an appearance in Eli Roth's Cabin Fever (she's most memorable to me though as "Aerola" in the amusing spoof Not Another Teen Movie).

If you're looking for some quick thrills and grue then Return To House On Haunted Hill is more than willing to please. It delivers much more than I expected it to and makes for an entertaining diversion giving me hope that not all DTV sequels are destined to be crappy, pale comparisons of the original movie.

Review based on unrated version. (Chris Hartley, 10/12/07)

Directed By: Victor Garcia.
Written By: William Massa.

Starring: Amanda Righetti, Cerina Vincent, Erik Palladino, Tom Riley.

Picture Ratio: 2.35:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: Being as this is an all-new production the picture quality here is as good as you'd expect it to be. It's a clean transfer that handles the film's multiple dark scenes and quick flashes of light equally well. It doesn't suffer from many jagged edges and I didn't notice any compression issues. It's an all-around good looking disc.

Extras: While I like the concept behind most of the special features on the disc, as they help flesh-out some of the back story that the movie doesn't, most of the material here is still sadly throwaway at best.

We get a section entitled "Confessionals" which is meant to be footage of the movie's characters talking about what's happening to them in the movie. Like I said, I like the idea as it's different from the usual EPK material, but it just doesn't seem necessary. Another featurette entitled "The Search For An Idol" has Pacey's Dr. Hammer character talking about the Baphomet idol's history and his journey to find it. We also get four deleted and extended scenes that don't really add much to the finished product as well as a music video for the so-so metal band Mushroomhead entitled "Simple Survival".