I often watch horror movies when I want ... well, er, entertainment. Even though that (entertainment for entertainment's sake) is a fairly low bar for many, for me I will positively NOT be entertained if the execution of the movie (story, acting, effects, etc) is poor -- instead, I will be annoyed.
In this case I was highly annoyed.
Exhausted from a couple of days of driving, I lay back to scrape the sides of the online barrels (Netflix, Google Play) to see if anything decent was left. I found House of Bones, and -- gaack! -- purchased it before sidling on over to IMDb to check out reviews. Bad idea. Even though it was only a couple of dollars, I felt ripped off.
It is difficult to know whether to chiefly blame the acting or the writing or the direction or the concept. All are poor -- but it takes an extraordinary actor to light up material that is so poorly written as to make no sense, and that is what we have here.
I'll just point out one small example of why -- or rather how -- this movie is a steaming pile of thrown-together crap, and then I'm going to quit, because House of Bones has already wasted enough of my time. This should serve as an example of the manner of slapdashery you'll find here.
The 'haunted house' crew has, it's made fairly clear, NEVER (before visiting the "Wicker House", that is) seen anything scarier than a woman who tried to pick up one of the crew members in a bar, ha ha ha hee ha my sides are splitting. That is, they've NEVER seen anything "supernatural". And YET ... not only do they all seem to know what "ectoplasm" is, THEY'VE ENCOUNTERED IT BEFORE (the previous encounter was with something green -- the ectoplasm here is yellow, and "smells old").
Hunh? Which is the case? Neither is the case, because this movie wasn't developed, it was stitched together, and the pieces fit badly.
There is no focused plot, there are no coherent characters (there can't be in a Mulligan Stew like this) and the majority of the effects are really terrible. Things just happen, and then they stop happening.
Congratulations! You'll never get that hour and a half back.