I’ve thought long and hard about what exactly Tommy Faircloth’s Family Possessions reminded me of and I could quite put my finger on it until now. It’s a harder edged Halloween special. That might sound like a knock, but it isn’t. It reminds me of the kinds of Halloween specials that used to play on television when I was a kid. Not that such TV events don’t still happen, but they often seem less polished and more watered down these days.

It has a sense of fun about it that is often lacking in horror cinema these days. More often than not, new horror comedies tend to skew towards the Raimi/Jackson direction. They go madcap and over-the-top with their genre shenanigans. I love that stuff just as much as everyone else, but I sometimes miss having more grounded horror comedies to balance things out.

The story involves a financially-troubled family of four moving into the patriarch’s old family home in a small town. The house used to belong to said man’s mother, who rumor has it was the town witch and used to store dug up corpses in her basement. As you can imagine, the town’s residents don’t have the best first impression of the family when they arrive, despite the fact that they’re rather normal all around.

Our lead here is the teenage daughter, who is the actual owner of the home. How’s that for an interesting wrinkle? It seems that granny witch loved her granddaughter, but didn’t care much for the rest of them. Granny’s will specifies that the family can reside in the house only so long as her granddaughter lives there as well. Since they are broke, the pressure is on our protagonist to go to the local college, lest they be evicted by the bank if she moves away.

Naturally something is off about the home. Things move on their own that shouldn’t. Strange noises come from places that no one is occupying. Also, some town residents start turning up brutally murdered. All signs point to the possibility that the old witch’s spirit is up to no good, which is a bummer, since they can’t just pick up and leave. After all, they’re broke.

Family Possessions still contains creepy moments and violent deaths, but there’s a wholesome sincerity to it all. It’s as if someone snuck into a Disney special and added in bloody murders when no one was looking. Again, this is not a knock against what Faircloth has created here. If anything, it’s cause for celebration. We’re looking at what could become a solid entry point for kids into a future love for slasher and supernatural horror tropes.

The film wears its heart for the genre on its sleeve, from the Friday the 13^th-style pauses before a sharp object is brought down upon a victim to its two entertaining supporting roles for a few horror alumni. Mark Patton, star of the ever-underrated A Nightmare on Elm Street II: Freddy’s Revenge, gives a fun comedic turn as a small-town barista. Felissa Rose, she of Sleepaway Camp infamy, also shows up as the disapproving mother of one of our teenage leads.

Family Possessions is a smartly written film that is filled with laughs, bloody kills, and (mostly) light-hearted horror. It’s a well-directed and shot horror comedy that doesn’t tread any new ground, but brings with it a sense of fun and sincerity. I’m not sure what its release plans are like at the moment outside of the festival circuit, but whenever it finally becomes available to a mass audience, it’ll make for a good gateway horror film to show to your children, younger cousins, the neighbor’s kids, whoever you’re babysitting, etc….providing they can stand a little bloody violence. It should give them a nice taste without dishing out too much trauma.