The Selling

When you're in the mood for a corny, campy humorous horror flick this is it! Lots of laughs, really enjoyed it.:)

Whenever I watch a movie where a family buys a haunted house I always wonder what an ordeal the real estate agent went through behind the scenes. Words can not express how happy I was to find a movie about exactly that, and that it's actually good. It would have been so easy for this to be an unfunny mess with a good premise, but there's a good amount of heart mixed in with some fun jokes.

Side note: Evie Barret from Stan Against Evil was in this and I was going nuts the whole movie trying to remember what I knew her from.

Horror comedy done well. Quite the gem! The opening sequence is brilliant with the foreboding quote. Very good cast but most especially lead actor Gabriel Diani whose dry delivery sells the humor amidst horrific mainstays like bleeding walls. Also very talented rival real estate agent played by Janet Varney plays a great opposite with her cold hearted tactics against Gabriel Diane's too much niceness.

Other highlights include the terrifying Sunday school teacher played by Barry Bostwick. Merciless humor!

Other facets did not quite play out though. I expected Gabriel Diani's honesty to get him into more trouble which didn't happen. And some other actors did not quite hit the mark (Jonathan Klein as the best friend-funny script moments but a little rote). The ending also left a loose end which while expected does have terrible consequences if you think about it.

However, with everything given, this film wins for its originality and execution. Very nice use of music, some stellar moments when the music stops and starts leading to both scariness and laughs. Nicely done!

Watched movie not knowing what to expect except for a real estate sale. Because of its quirkiness including characters, I found myself gradually laughing more than being scared. After a couple laughs, it got habitual even climaxing. I would rate this movie as the standard for a comedy horror to beat. Note I define it as a comedy first. It is Diani's masterpiece. In hindsight, just the thought of 2 guys trying to flip a haunted house says it all.

Funniest movie I've seen in a long time, cleverly spearing a lot of horror movie conventions while keeping a fairly even balance between scariness and laugh-out-loud humor. I've always wanted to see a ghost movie where the protagonist doesn't just shrink in terror or go into some kind of slow-motion coma. This is it! There's a lot packed in here with plenty of throwaway jokes and surprises. Barry Bostwick's cameo as Father Jimmy the exorcist is priceless and tells us that the creative team really knew its film history. The end credit scenes (watch to the very end) are magnificent non sequiturs. Well done. (The credits say 2012 but information says 2021 release. I wonder why the gap.)