Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘8989 Redstone’

Written by Scott Edwards

​If you are like so many of my friends, you love home restoration shows, mainly because they make it look so easy to flip a house and make a hefty profit. I can confirm that putting a new coat of paint on the walls is easy and some of the woodworking can be done easily, but that is about it. When it comes down to it, if you buy a cheap house that has major problems, you will find yourself getting in deeper and deeper every day. Even if you are not trying to flip the house, the wiring and plumbing in an old fixer upper can be enough to make you want to start over, and of course it can be far more difficult to live in that house, if you discover that it has quite the history.
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With his next episode of Mastering Disaster getting ready to film, Darryl Masters and his daughter Rebecca have moved to war torn Detroit. With a beautiful house on their agenda, Darryl sees that there is plenty of work to do on his first walk through, but he is not too worried, since this will make for a great episode. While shooting the first reactions of the crew, a door slamming out of the blue startles the crew, but chalking it up to a draft, they continue to move on. With a full body mirror on the wall, the craftsmanship of the house seems to be great, but seeing a door on the wall that leads to nowhere, Darryl is starting to wonder what the heck the previous owner was thinking.

As the first day goes off without a hitch, the second day of shooting is terrible for the crew. With a fire breaking out for no reason and one of his crew stepping on a nail, there seems to be some bad juju in the house that nobody is willing to admit. But when trying to get some external shots of cleaning up, Darryl’s workers take off, leaving only him, his daughter and the film crew to continue on. Needing a new group of workers, Darryl’s producer Jo is able to get some locals to come in and while Darryl is not too happy about the situation, he has enough to make the show work and hopefully continue on.

With work starting on the house and the door to nowhere on the first level being removed, Darryl is happy with the results and is ready to move on. But after throwing a pizza party for his crew and coming back to the house in the morning, everyone is in for a surprise. Seeing that the house has been vandalized during the night with spray paint all around, Darryl believes that kids are to blame, but his new house is just starting to reveal its secrets. Finding that a Satanic Altar has been set up in the house, new worker Buddha wants the house to be blessed to put his crew at ease, but when the monks he calls in leave quickly and don’t bless the house at all, he believes that nobody should stay in the house. But needing the ratings to keep his show afloat, Darryl plans to shoot a Halloween episode where he stays in the house overnight. Nobody knows the true secret of 8989 Redstone, but they will soon uncover the truth about every last one of them.

Just a fun story that takes us behind the scenes of a reality show and it goes into much more than just fixing up a house, since you have a love story, a haunted girl and a struggling star that needs ratings, so what could go wrong? I think that is why I liked it, because everything goes wrong, and it is glorious. I also liked how they added a little bit of backstory to the house and its previous owner who could accomplish anything that he ever wanted. With all of the warnings being thrown their way, nobody really wants to leave the house until the job is done, which gives you a small sense of realism, because most people would not be able to do walk away when they have all of their money funneled into a massive project. With a door that leads to nowhere, a haunted girl, an overbearing father, strange sounds and a house that does not want to be touched, you’ve got a pretty good, haunted house movie that keeps you wondering what is really happening inside of the walls of 8989 Redstone. Stay Scared.

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