Hey, kids! Who wants to see a crappy sequel to a crappy film remake? “Sign me up,” you say…? Awesome. Then you can totally have my copy of “Return to House on Haunted Hill,” because it sucks ass.

I’m not looking to be overly critical here – honest, I’m not – but, hand on heart, the film was so God-awful boring and filled to the brim with cliché-ridden dialogue that I actually briefly fell asleep somewhere around the 20-minute mark and had to be roused by my wife. (This event would recur at least two more times before the end of the 81-minute film.)

The only person brave enough to return from the original film is Jeffrey Combs, who reprises his role of Dr. Richard Benjamin Vannacutt, the decidedly deceased former head of the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane, now otherwise known as the House on Haunted Hill. Given Combs’ history in the horror and sci-fi genres, we wouldn’t begin to begrudge him the paycheck, but it’s only fair to note that when he’s the biggest name in a film, it’s not what you’d call a great sign. Cast-wise, it’s also a major, major comedown from the first film, which starred Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher, Chris Kattan, Ali Larter, and Bridgette Wilson.

The lead character this time around is Ariel Wolfe (Amanda Righetti), whose sister, Sara, was in the original film, played by Larter. Ariel’s the ballbusting editor of a fashion magazine, but she becomes a caring sister about, oh, maybe five seconds after finding out that Sara’s killed herself. (Bad timing, that.) As it turns out, however, it wasn’t actually suicide; Sara was murdered by someone looking for access to something called the Baphomet Idol, which Dr. Vannacutt referenced in his journals.

God, y’know, I’m sorry, but I’m bored just talking about this film, so I’m just gonna cut to the chase here: this entire film exists solely to get some more people back into the house, so they can get killed. The dialogue is so bad that it makes me want to write a film script, because, damn, come on, I can write better lines than…

* “I think I’m losing my mind.”
* “They say the ghosts of the people who died here still haunt this house.”
* “What are you saying, that someone killed my sister?” “All I’m saying is…be careful.”

The only thing this film has going for it at all are the special effects; it isn’t until almost the 30-minute mark that they really kick in, and they’re not really that great when they do. (Oh, wait, I just remembered that the film has one other thing going for it: lesbian ghosts. But they’re only for one scene…dammit.) The sound mix on the DVD is really the only thing that makes the film even remotely scary, as it provides the sounds of doors slamming and machines creaking in different speakers.

I did, at least, come up with a new entry for Roger Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary while watching this film: when there’s a knock on a closed door and the person who goes to open it is addressing the person on the other side, the person on the other side is invariably not who they thought they were addressing.

If this entry already exists, however, please don’t tell me; I’d hate to think the entire experience of watching “Return to House on Haunted Hill was in vain.

P.S. As I struggled to stay awake for the last few minutes, I leaned over to my wife and said, “Okay, well, there’s the ending, so now all we need is the tacked-on scene to provide the link to the sequel to the sequel.” But we didn’t get it. Instead, it went to the credits, and I did NOT let the door hit me on the ass on the way out. As it turns out, however, if you watched beyond the credits, that’s where the scene resides. So be prepared for that sequel to the sequel after all…and be prepared for it to suck even more ass than this one did.