There are generally, in my experience, two kinds of haunted house movies, the one in which the house is occupied by ghosts who need someone to help them fix the things that went wrong in their lives, and the one in which the house just plain old wants you dead.

Both of them can often be scary, though admittedly, one is usually scarier than the other.

This one is the first type, though it’s really not much less freaky for the difference.

It’s Brittany Murphy’s last movie, folks, and today we’re talking Deadline.

Brittany Murphy plays a writer who’s behind schedule on her screenplay, and thus she goes off to a house in the middle of nowhere to get some peace and quiet.  But in true horror movie fashion, this plan doesn’t work any too well for her, and she’s left trying to piece together a ghost-laded mystery in the midst of it all.

There will be all the standards for haunted house fare–noises, brief flashes of things real or possibly imagined, the distinct possibility that all this is happening because the hero is merely going insane, and of course, lots of creaks and groans from the house in question.

Plus, we’ll even get a few nifty twists out of this, including that final twist, the twist of SHEER REALITY.  If you haven’t heard the story by now, let’s just say that where they found Brittany Murphy in the movie is almost exactly the same place and the same way they found her in REAL LIFE.  That’s spectacularly ghoulish but it’s no less accurate, and no less creepy.

Creepy is an excellent word in general to describe this, and though it doesn’t have a lot of the sheer adrenaline fright of a horror flick where the house wants you dead, it does have more than enough decent scares to keep horror buffs interested.  This might well make an excellent date movie.

And the Screenhead Ten Scale in reply gives it a seven out of ten for bringing the scares, if in somewhat meager quantity.

Rest in peace, Brittany Murphy.  You went out with a bang.