Four gay friends gather for a weekend stay at a haunted house. Larry (Travis Coles) is getting married, so his friends Nico (Frankie Grande, Ariana's brother), Reggie (Troy Iwata) and Kevin (Noah J. Ricketts) have decided to throw him a bachelor party with all sorts of fun events: a 'wine and design' evening, a burlesque revue, and... a seance.
All four characters are well drawn and funny in their own right; Larry himself is meek and self-conscious, Nico is the drama queen, Reggie is the punctilious, responsible one and Kevin... Kevin is a dumb kid who's recovering from a failed online relationship which I won't go into because it's too good a joke to spoil. The four have good rapport with each other, an easy, lived-in chemistry that makes it easy to root for them.
As the first night wears on two there are two events that threaten to derail the celebrations. The first is the seance, which Nico officiates with a homebrew book of spells (he's an expert because he's watched Wicked umpteen times); The house belonged to Sylvia (Veanne Cox), a woman who murdered her son, so they're basically Summoning Sylvia to get her to explain herself. It doesn't seem to work... at first.
The second, and initially more problematic, event is that due to a series of misunderstandings and Larry's inability to say no to people, there's a surprise fifth guest to the party: his very straight brother-in-law-to be Harrison (Nicholas Logan), who immediately proceeds to piss everyone - but particularly Nico - off with some poorly chosen comments.
Larry's stuck between trying to please Harrison and appease his friends, which isn't easy with the personalities involved. And then, on top of the various misunderstandings, blunders and personality clashes, come mysterious noises and electric failures; Suddenly everyone is running around like headless chickens.
It'd be a stretch to call Summoning Sylvia a horror movie. Or even a horror comedy. It's an extremely campy farce that doesn't have a single mean bone in its body.
That doesn't mean that the genre elements are completely neglected, though. The film constantly finds clever (and budget-friendly) ways to seamlessly transition from the bachelor party to the past, so it can shed light on what actually happened between Sylvia (who acts like she's trying to out-cenobite Doug Bradley) and her son. Writer/director duo Wesley Taylor and Alex Wyse have an impressive command of pacing, and along with editor Sara Corrigan they give the movie a relentless momentum that's particularly impressive in how unforced it feels. It's a great film debut full of delightful little touches - far more than you usually get on much bigger, better budgeted comedies.
There aren't that many jokes, but the ones that are there range from broad but solid to great; The rest of the film is buoyed by a likeable, game cast and an unfailingly good-natured tone. Maybe a few little moments of darkness here and there, a little tragedy - trace amounts, really, but they help round out a film that otherwise would be nearly weightless. What threat there is is played for laughs, an excuse for the cast to comically overreact rather than an attempt to edge the movie into horror territory.
As far as complaints go, they're all pretty minor. At least one of the minor characters is genuinely terribly acted, and there's a scene at the very end that goes overboard in a way that undoes some of the genuinely sweet character work that precedes it. But you know what? That a feel-good movie has an over-the-top feel-good ending will probably not register as a problem for most right-thinking people; As for myself, it still bothers me, but I can accept it. The movie earned it.
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