My quick rating – 2.8/10. If there’s one thing The Haunting of Michael Barrow proves, it’s that grief is scary but not nearly as scary as bad acting, off-camera kills, and a hammer with a vengeance.
Going by its edgier alias, The Bleeding Dark (honestly, 10/10 name upgrade), this film kicks off with a brutal assault scene that feels like it was directed by someone who just discovered the “record” button. We’re told it’s brutal. We see… something. Mostly shadows, noise, and confusion. It sets the tone for the rest of the movie, which somehow manages to take a tragic premise and turn it into a supernatural soap opera with zero payoff and even less budget.
Courtney Gains stars as John Barrow, a man so agoraphobic after losing his wife that he never leaves the house, which might actually be more about the filming schedule than character depth. Gains delivers his performance with the subtlety of a foghorn. His “grieving” face is the same as his “angry” face, which is the same as his “possessed by questionable dialogue” face. The rest of the cast floats somewhere between “community theatre dropout” and “person who wandered onto the set and got cast out of sympathy.”
The story—if you can call it that—revolves around Michael (Sebastian Bjorn), the increasingly insufferable teenage son, and the darkness lurking in their home. The darkness ends up being their dead wife/mother, who decides to possess the son and go on a hammer-based murder spree. Why? Great question. The movie hints at reasons but never follows through, like a drunk guy at a party who says, “I’m gonna tell you the truth now” and then passes out.
The horror is delivered mostly through shaky camera tricks, sudden sound effects, and the emotional trauma of watching practical effects happen just after the kills are over. This is a movie where the scariest thing is the hammer… and it never even gets a proper close-up.
Possession here isn’t so much terrifying as it is mildly inconvenient. The son becomes even more of a jerk, the father gets sweatier, and the family members stop by only to say “you guys need therapy” before disappearing forever. By the time the climax hits (with all the force of a soft breeze), you’ll be more haunted by the wasted time than anything happening onscreen.
At a merciful 86 minutes (thankfully), The Haunting of Michael Barrow is short—but it feels long. Like, multiple commercial breaks long. And unless you’re a masochist for under-explained ghost mom revenge arcs and hammer-based mediocrity, you can safely let this one fade into the dark void of forgotten VOD titles. Skip it. Burn some sage. Give that hammer a break—it’s been through enough.
This might be a blessing, but no streamers are carrying this one.