For Sale by Owner

"For Sale By Owner" is a haunting thriller--from which you assume, trained by recent movies, that it is filled with nerve wreaking tension, eerie flash-backs and extremely disturbing character study. For those who expect episodic, gory, blood and guts ride, this is not your type of movie. On the contrary, it is a clever story in which an atmosphere of dread slowly envelops the characters--too slowly at times.

The film takes place in a house in small-town USA called Emeryville. In this house lives Sera (Amanda Brown) with her husband, Mr. Growstosky. To the house one day, on a stormy afternoon, comes a real-estate agent named Andrew Byrd (John Lansch), who is responding to Mr. Growstosky's call for putting the house for sale on the market.

Caught in the storm of the century and waiting for his ride, Sera reluctantly allows Andrew inside the house. At the same time, a serial killer is on a rampage, killing random victims and marking his kill by carving a number 13 on their chests.

During the course of their conversation, we find out that Andrew is an extremely temperamental person fighting a nasty child custody battle. His personality changes after a few drinks. Sera soon realizes that Andrew does to plan to leave and her life might be in jeopardy.

Just when things begin to take turn for the worst, John Denton (Marc H) shows up at the door in a form of Messiah. Just when Sera starts feeling a bit secured, we learn that John is carrying religious baggage.

The movie's events are such that I must not describe them. Even a hint might give away the game. Of course they are elusive and mysterious, explained first one way and then another.

The director has the patience to create a languorous, suspense filled atmosphere, and Amanda Brown succeeds in convincing me that she is a normal person in a disturbing situation and not just a standard-issue horror movie hysteric. The writing, although not superlative, had me glued to the screen wanting to watch as the drama unfolded.

We were given this film by mistake at the DVD rental shop (under the name 'th13teen' -- we actually wanted the Holly Hunter movie about teenage sex/drug/crime).

This is basically like a student movie. The dialog is stilted and unrealistic, the production values are bordering on non-existent, the music is over-the-top and poorly done, the story makes very little sense and it's all a rather surreal experience in B-movie badness.

It's the kind of film that might be worth watching at 3am on a Sunday morning if you were drunk/stoned and there was nothing else on. Certainly don't bother paying money to see this trash!

I watched this movie late last night (alone) and it really freaked me out. Although, in my opinion, the movie needs to be reclassified as a horror rather than a thriller. The storyline is very unique and extremely realistic. I am not a horror buff but this one grabbed my attention. Although the story develops slowly, the movie never lost my attention. The actors and the cinematographer deed a very good job. The black and white flashback sequences were very disturbing. But as some other viewers already commented, there were some plot holes/things I didn't get. But I am guessing that those questions were done on purpose and the writer wanted to keep a certain degree of ambiguity. Upon reviewing the movie the second time, a lot of questions seem to have been answered very subtly.

Bottom line was, I really enjoyed it, it was creepy and would highly recommend this one to my friends.

Premise seemed familiar - serial killer on the loose in a quiet town, woman home alone to find a strange man in her house. But as the story developed, which starts a bit slow, the characters reveal deep inner demons that haunt them. Nice use of flashback and digital effects to show the world in their heads. I was expecting a bit more blood and gore, but found it to be smartly used when needed.

Just when I thought I had figured it out and knew how it would end, it seems to throw that upside down. This is a nice lower-budget indie film from the US that had some surprisingly good acting despite a relatively modest production value. Worth a look.

Don't know why people voted 6 or higher. Very thin story and regular acting. The end of the movie is like many others and a little bit childish:" Oh John, where are you?". I've never heard that before.

The story is also like "swiss-cheese" (a lot of holes). You can't really figure out what's it about. Of course you can guess what's it about, but the plot is very poor and doesn't give the answers. Not even a thought for consideration, but a complete gap.

And I didn't like the way it was shot. One big close-up. I don't like it, but that's just subjective. Very little music. And the 'freak-out' moments were funny. I didn't even shake my glass of Coke. A little bit different then for instance The Ring (I didn't sleep at all, that night.)

My advise, do not rent or buy this one. There are many many many better movies with similar (and better) scenarios.