Screamityville (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Oct 27, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
-
Director
Ryan ArchibaldRelease Date(s)
2024 (October 14, 2025)Studio(s)
MVD Entertainment Group/Borderline Media Group- Film/Program Grade: B-
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: D-
Review
Around Halloween, there’s a house in almost every neighborhood that becomes a showplace with assorted ghosts, goblins, vampires, and other creatures of the night, sometimes accompanied by grisly demons that seem to come to life every few seconds. Screamityville is an homage to the people who love to turn their front yards into cemeteries, haunted houses, and other tributes to the season.
This isn’t your typical narrative film or documentary, but rather a wordless tour of elaborate home Halloween displays without a real human being in sight. The camera lingers over displays in wide shots with close-ups to accentuate particular details. Heightened by creepy music and sound effects, the film celebrates the cleverness of execution and hard work involved in creating such presentations. There’s no footage of works in progress, as you might find in a typical documentary. We see only the finished product.
Slow pans take in the breadth of the displays, most enhanced with atmospheric lighting that make the displays glow under the night skies. Transitions from one house to the next are done with a whooshing sound as either a colony of bats or a cloud of black smoke flash across the screen. All the filming was done at night. The displays include King Kong rising from the ground, dinosaur skeletons, a yard filled with eerie killer clowns, illuminated jack o’lanterns hanging from trees, a skeleton horse pulling a buggy, a couple of skeletons carrying a blood-soaked body, horned reindeer-like creatures with claws, the grim reaper, ghosts floating back and forth on overhead wires, a dance of death between two animatronic skeletons in formal wear, desiccated Wizard of Oz characters, a ghostly ship complete with its skeleton crew, and a giant praying mantis ready to pounce.
Nods to horror movies include displays featuring the Minions from Despicable Me, the Frankenstein monster, Freddy Kreuger, and Beetlejuice himself, standing eight feet tall. An entire display is devoted to Stranger Things.
There’s no apparent organization as to how the homes are shown. The film relies on the spectacular front yard designs to draw us in. At 84 minutes, the film eventually becomes repetitive. A shorter running time would likely hold viewer attention better. Essentially a travelogue of impressive Halloween-decorated property, Screamityville shows there are hardly any limits to the imagination of homeowners who create their own scenarios using traditional scary characters. A few yards are so chocked full of “stuff” that the effect looks more like a tacky yard sale than a Halloween display, but for the most part the displays are artfully arranged. With no narration, the images flow one into the next as electronic music plays. The film can certainly provide ideas for those thinking of creating their own displays. It might also serve as an appropriate backdrop at a Halloween party, much as the burning Yule log video adds seasonal cheer to Christmas get-togethers.
The cinematography is excellent. Shadows enhance atmosphere. Close-ups show details, which include animatronic beasts, clever rethinking of traditional monsters, homemade props, and especially a sense of humor. None of the displays is overly gruesome or in bad taste. Clearly, these homeowners delight in mounting such displays and are proud of their achievements. Lighting includes strings of small bulbs as a kind of border to yard displays, strobe effects, flashing lights, but mostly simple colored lights throwing creepy hues onto monsters.
Screamityville was captured digitally, but there are no credits on the Blu-ray, which is presented in the aspect ratio of 1.78:1. The soundtrack is Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. The only special feature on the disc is a 29-second promotion for the company’s other products, which include Christmas decorations.
Screamityville reflects a genuine love of Halloween from families who devote time, imagination, effort and money to turn their homes into seasonal dioramas every October. It’s nice that this film showcases their efforts, but unfortunately the owners/artists aren’t credited. There’s a sense of wonderment as these marvels of imaginative excess pass before us. The notes on the Blu-ray case warn, “Brace yourself for the most chilling tour of your life.” The film is more impressive than chilling. Youngsters probably could enjoy this as well as adults without fear of nightmares.
- Dennis Seuling