Welcome to Knockout Horror. Today we are taking a look at influencer themed, paranormal, horror movie Chateau by writer, director, Luke Genton.
Chateau follows an aspiring social media influencer as she is given a cleaning job in an old French chateau. Allegedly haunted, our protagonist, James (Cathy Marks), sees this as an opportunity to increase her fame so secretly films the inside of the property. Little realising just what she has gotten herself into.
This movie released during the early part of December 2024 and, to be honest, there wasn’t much opportunity to take a look at it. What with all of the Festive Frights shenanigans, and all.
Pretty Ill Timed
In fact, you could go as far as to say that Chateau is a little ill placed in the horror calendar. It’s not Christmas themed, it features a fairly drizzly Autumn setting, and it hit the market at a time when the majority of people are too busy wrapping presents to worry about supernatural influencer horror movies.
That’s without mentioning the general level of fatigue that the horror community must be feeling towards the whole “influencer” thing, at this point. There’s just so many damn movies focused around social media celebrities. It’s getting very old, very fast. It doesn’t help that only a handful are actually good.
For every Clickbait, Deadstream, Sissy and Influencer. There are ten movies like Shook, #No_Filter, #Float and Followers. It’s too easy for directors to give their lead actors a camera, call them influencers and then curl out a horrifically cheap, not at all scary, found footage pile of crap. So where does Chateau fall?
It’s Kind of Hard To Say
Well, Chateau, at least initially, seems to fall, more, towards the latter half of that list. There will be something of a caveat to my feelings, regarding this movie, coming up but, first, I can’t ignore the obvious. This is an extremely trope heavy movie that feels formulaic, a bit cheap, unoriginal and rather poorly made.
It’s hard to shake the feeling that the team used whatever was at their disposal to manufacture scares. Whether it be a white sheet to throw over a character’s head or a dollar store, Halloween, makeup kit. There is nothing here that feels particularly creative or smart. Throw in a whole bunch of “seen it all before” found footage cliches. As well as a recycled plot line as old as the house the movie is set in. And it is hard not to feel like Chateau has very little to offer.
The distinct DIY nature of the film belies a filmmaker (Luke Genton) and producer (Colton Tran) combo that have actually worked on decently well produced films like Sorry, Charlie. It’s almost as if they had some spare time and a free location so decided to throw together a movie. I doubt that a film like this even breaks the overdraft limit on the producer’s bank account. Let alone has a special effects budget.
But…..
I mentioned a caveat, a little earlier, in the review and that caveat is something of a contradictory one. I actually enjoyed Chateau. Yep, both my fiancée and I found ourselves laughing at, and enjoying, this film. It’s sort of difficult to explain but the movie is so silly that it is kind of fun. Cathy Marks is believable as an aspiring influencer and comes across as legitimately likable. She has great comedy timing and some of the more throw away lines in the movie are actually quite amusing. Well, if you have a childish sense of humour, that is.
Marks and Tran (who is pulling double duty as producer and actor) have great chemistry. Their interactions feel authentic and the, potentially improvised, dialogue garners a number of laughs. Some of which had us legitimately chuckling far more than we expected. They are a lot of fun when on screen together and make for a great horror duo.
There is something of an old school feel to the scares, as well. With an abundance of hokey makeup and hammy acting making up for the lack of special effects. It’s rather charming in a bizarre kind of way. The runtime works in the movie’s favour, as well. With the clock running out right before the film wears out its welcome. Chateau feels like a horror movie you would have watched on late night television in the 90s and enjoyed a lot more than you expected.
Should You Watch Chateau?
Chateau is not, technically, a very good movie. It has a bunch of issues and it’s, really, not all that original or, even, easy to recommend. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. There is an enjoyable horror, here, with a quirky sense of humour and a DIY style that helps you forgive some of the problems. If you can push aside the bad parts and just accept it as a bit of a silly film that a group of people had some fun making, I think you can enjoy Chateau more than you might think. I know that we did.