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Review: ‘The Houses October Built 2’ revisits effective mix of found-footage horror and haunted houses

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The 2014 shocker “The Houses October Built” had a fairly original spin on found-footage horror, mixing scenes from real American haunted houses with a fictional story about thrill-seekers pursuing one “extreme haunt” too many.

“The Houses October Built 2” brings back the core cast and the same team of filmmakers (led by writer-director-star Bobby Roe and writer-producer-star Zack Andrews). This time out, both the characters and the people playing them have become famous among scare aficionados, due to the first film.

Roe and Andrews add a few other new wrinkles, including drone cameras and a new “holy grail of haunts” for the heroes: a shadowy group named Hellbent that treats its clientele to an experience akin to being kidnapped and tortured.

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As was the case with the original, most of the first hour of “Houses October Built 2” offers a loose tour through various Halloween-themed attractions around the country, including a hayride, a zombie race, an R-rated circus sideshow, and a hot dog-eating contest featuring competitive eating champ Takeru Kobayashi and the makeup-wearing band members of Mini Kiss.

These vignettes are only sporadically entertaining, and sap a lot of the narrative momentum before the extended climax — which itself is largely a retread of the first film’s big finish. Still, the basic concept behind this franchise remains sound: take some borrowed scares from professional haunters, add a few spooky twists, then leave the audience puzzling over how much that they saw actually happened.

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‘The Houses October Built 2’

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes

Playing: Monica Film Center, Santa Monica

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