Product Description
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It's Halloween 1989 and best friends Sam and Josh are just
trying to enjoy their last "Devil's Night" before graduating high
school. Trouble soon arises when the two pals and a group of
friends take a detour on their way to a rock concert, finding an
old abandoned barn and awakening the evil inside.
Review
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My favorite time of the year is the haunting season and every
September I begin to get antsy while looking at the and
counting down the days to October 1st. Like most of you I've been
sweating the end of summer heat and begging for something to take
me away to the cherished burning leaf smell of October. Thank the
dark lords for Justin Seaman's The Barn. Set on Halloween in
1989, The Barn is a love letter to everything that there is to
love and fear on Halloween night. The movie opens with a
flashback sequence to Halloween 1959 and the community of Wheary
Falls is in full on Halloween celebratory mode. The kids gather
at the local church for a word from the pastor and are then off
to the local harvest hootenanny. Of course, two kids can t follow
the All Hallows Eve rules which include staying away from a
certain barn. Flash forward thirty years and we re thrown full
force into the world of Sam and Josh, two seventeen year old s
who live for Halloween and all the joys it brings. Sam (Mitchell
Musolino) is the embodiment of everyone who builds haunts in
their parent s garages and basks in the offerings of the holiday.
Josh (Will Stout) is his lifelong best friend who since the loss
of his her earlier in the year hasn t really been the same.
After one of their pranks on Ms. Barnhart played by scream queen
Linnea Quigley goes too far the boys are faced with the
realization that this is the last year of unabashed Halloween fun
that they will ever get to have. When their favorite metal band
announces on the local rock show hosted by Dr. Rock that they are
performing a special Halloween night concert, Sam and Josh decide
that they have no choice but to go to the concert and cement
themselves as local Halloween legends.They gather up some friends
and hit the road bound for the concert. After taking a shortcut
they end up in Wheary Falls and smack dab in front of the titular
Barn that holds legendary evils. Being a horror movie set on
Halloween you know the demons will be unleashed on this group of
teenagers as well as the unsuspecting townsfolk. The aftermath of
which will never be forgotten by those that live to tell the
tale. There are countless horror films set on Halloween, very few
actually capture and imbue the spirit the way The Barn does.
Justin Seaman brilliantly captures every minute detail from the
brilliant script and set design to the amazing soundtrack of the
film that really transports you into proceedings. The cast are
all brilliant and play the parts to the tilt. Lexi Dripps
portrayal of Michelle is one of the best girl next door type
performances that I've seen in the genre in quite a while and
ranks up there with Phoebe Cates in Gremlins. The demons that
terrorize our protagonists are a perfect mesh of 80's kitsch and
old school monster magazine s. I can easily see these
villains becoming popular Halloween costumes for years to come.
The cast and crew of The Barn put everything they had into
creating a film that will bring the Halloween spirit into your
heart at any time of the year and honestly that s all that we as
horror fans can ask for. The Barn comes with my highest
recommendation. --Tom Holland's Terror Time
If you were one of the multitudes of horror aficionados that cut
their teeth on the abundance of VHS chillers back in the
mid-80's, then you've got to be overjoyed with the plethora of
throwback flicks that have been unleashed over the course of the
last few years. To remember such plastic-cased classics is a
thing of beauty, and to revisit them is even more special, but
the notion of a tribute to those films that entertained us is a
whole other beast, entirely. Allow me to introduce the latest
barbarian into the fray: The Barn from director Justin M. Seaman,
and suffice it to say, it s beginning to feel a lot like 1989.
The opener of this one takes us back to Halloween 1959, and the
setting is Wheary Falls, a small town with a large backing from
the local church, and the annual hootenanny is underway, and all
that s asked of the party goers from the pastor is that they BY
ALL MEANS, stay clear of the abandoned barn on the other side of
town. Now you honestly didn't think that everyone was going to
take the holy man s words to heart, did you? Here s where things
get interesting (without giving any spoilers away)- what happens
at the front door to the barn to a young kid is masterful, and
this is not by any means me cementing myself as a sadistic
bastard, but to pull off what Seaman does within the first 4
minutes is not only ballsy and unapologetic, but it sets a tone
for the rest of the film. Flash-forward to good old 1989, and the
town s biggest Halloween celebrators, Sam and Josh are doing what
they enjoy every Autumn: ing the cheez-whiz out of the locals
and making every Debbie downer in town angry. Their friendship
has stood the test of Josh s her s passing, and together they
compliment each other s twisted sense of humor. When a seemingly
harmless prank goes terribly wrong, the two have it broken down
to them that their days of jerking around MUST come to an abrupt
end. As the impending thoughts of a stagnant existence overwhelm
the two, their hopes are somewhat realigned with the news that
their favorite heavy metal band will be playing a one-night only
show on you guessed it, Halloween. So with a group of pals in
tow, the gathering decides that a shortcut to the show is the
best route (which it never is), and damned to all hell, wouldn't
you know where the shortcut drops our collection of misguided
adolescents? yep, right at the doors of the barn itself. Seems
the legends of the barn s inhabitants, The Boogeyman, Hallowed
Jack and The Candycorn ecrow aren't just tall tales after all
these creepy suckers are violent, unrepentant, and just not in
the Halloween mood. Supported by a couple of entertaining cameos
from Linnea Quigley and Ari Lehman, the cast does an admirable
job in pulling off performances that are effectually cheesy and
fitting for a movie such as this. Oh, and fans of gore? I
sincerely hope you brought the biggest damn plastic pumpkin you
could find to this film s doorstep, cause it s going to get
filled to the brim with enough blood and guts to keep you fed for
weeks after screw the candy, viscera s where it s at! There s
even a few decent-sized laughs sprayed around in this one to keep
things a little bit light from time to time. Overall, I can
without a doubt recommend The Barn to everyone looking for a fun,
retro trip back to the days of grainy, low-budgeted horror yanked
directly off the racks of your local video rental shop this one
will sit firmly entrenched in my top 5 of the best horror films
for 2016. Available NOW on both DVD and VHS from the barn merch.
com hell, there s all sorts of goodies available for your last
minute X-Mas shopping, so get on over and pick up a little
something for the demented ones in your life! --Dread Central
The Barn is a love letter to monster movies and the campy decade
where they reigned supreme, that s as fun as it is bloody! The
idea of everything old being new again is hardly a recent
development. That being said, the last year in particular has
seen throwbacks to the 80's and retro pastiches becoming a rabid
obsession of audiences. Material like Stranger Things and The
Final Girls have recently connected with people to unbelievable
degrees due to their nostalgic love for the era. It s not
difficult to see why this portion of the past is experiencing
such a resurgence. The 80's are a time where the monster reigned
supreme and horror films carried a surprising a of power
over the rest of cinema. So in spite of such a retro love letter
hardly being unfamiliar territory, The Barn pulls this off so
effortlessly and authentically. It is definitely the strongest
example of achieving this throwback horror since Rodriguez and
Tarantino's Grindhouse. In fact, The Barn is some of the most fun
that I've had at a horror film in a long time. The story that The
Barn frames itself around involves a cursed barn that has largely
been forgotten about for thirty years. The dangerous legend
associated with this relic sees three monsters, The Boogeyman,
Hollow Jack, and the Candy Corn ecrow, being components of a
Halloween curse that surrounds all of this. Cut to 1989, where
Sam and Josh, two precocious teens that are a little too g ho
for the holiday, come face-to-face with this deadly curse and the
horrors that come along with it. The Barn spends a good deal of
time on its characters, with both Sam and Josh being well
defined, albeit simple, protagonists. Everyone comes across as a
caricature, but in the comforting, intentional way that is
fundamental to the 80's. They re given a large posse of friends
to play with, which allows for the film to have a rather
expendable death count, which is the right direction for this
sort of film. You need to see those silly, over the top death
sequences. As their friends begin dying around them, The Barn
continues to bank on Sam and Josh s friendship. There is actually
believable, compelling chemistry between the two leads that gives
this film a y, necessary energy to drive it forward. One of
the aspects that makes all of this work so well is Sam s deep
love for Halloween. He pushes across an infectious obsession with
the holiday that frequently had me thinking about Matthew Lillard
in Scream. He s frequently bringing up these rules for Halloween
that he s created and each one of them is a real delight. Sam
treats Halloween like a religion and this approach ends up being
really beautiful. Add to that the fact that Sam and Josh are
about to graduate high school with this being their last
rtunity to trick or treat and paint the town blood red. A
nice touch that director, Justin M. Seaman, utilizes with the
film s supporting cast, like Sam s Dad or Ms. Barnhart, is that
these people are giving performances right out of the Tim and
Eric School of Acting. These characters pause at the wrong
moments in sentences and make bizarre enunciation choices as if
they re completely out of their element. Again, all of this is
done to play into the campiness and hammy nature of horror
performances circa the 80's but the film nails this aspect
especially well. This is something that s really hard to do
effectively without it going too far in either direction. These
performances are wonderfully wrong in the right sort of way, if
that makes sense. You re absolutely laughing with the film rather
than at it. It s in on this treat. --Bloody Disgusting
