House Hunting

Thank god.. focusing on the story...this is how indie films should be made. It's about time we saw more smart horror films and less of the crappy gore that's slopped out these days. The DVD cover from redbox had us expecting something totally different (we didn't expect much actually) but as the story got going we were saw that we were in for an original experience, something we had to actually pay attention to. I'm sure a lot of people who are looking for a blood bath or don't have decent attention spans are going to be very disappointed, but for serious fans of the thriller / suspense genre this is not to be missed. There are a few holes here and there, but even those kept me guessing and opened up interesting questions for the viewer. Hope we see much more work from these people. This is well worth your time if you have a decent attention span.

If the American dream for most families is buying a house, then for the two families headed to what they think is a simple open house, that dream is about to become a nightmare. A psychological thriller mixed in with your traditional ghost story, that is smart, tense and well conceived, overall a good movie with a well thought out plot. Acting wasn't fantastic but this did not detract too much from the movie which was overall quiet enjoyable. Low budget movie with a great story line. I couldn't imagine that this movie would make it to cinema release but it wouldn't be a bad DVD to rent. They need a better DVD cover tho. The picture makes it look like it will be a gory horror, which its not.

This movie could have been so much better, but it was cursed with the original Twilight Zone (1960-64) format: Riveting beginning (5 minutes), dull exposition about relationships (18 minutes), then an interesting ending (2 minutes). This movie follows the same pattern, but the exposition section is over an hour long.

Exposition slows down a movie, but it has its place. Foreign films-especially from Europe-usually commit a good section of the film to exposition. It works in those films, maybe because when you watch a film by Wim Wenders or Ingmar Bergman, you expect it to rest almost entirely on dialogue and a strong focus on relationships. House Hunting (2013) leans heavily upon exposition, but it's in the wrong genre for that. When people watch horror movies they expect it to be plot-driven with a heavy focus on the problem. This movie establishes a great problem at the beginning, then abandons the problem for most of the rest of the movie. Instead of focusing on a solution to the problem, the actors are given s script which focuses on soap opera relationships.

Maybe if I had understood from the beginning this aspect of the film I would have enjoyed the movie more. Their relationships do help them unfold the problem, but not enough. Nevertheless I do enjoy a good foreign film, so maybe the problem is simply in my expectations.

Despite starting off very badly, clichéd, and woodenly acted, I choose to stick with this movie about two families (one headed by ol' Beastmaster himself, Marc Singer) who go out to look at a quaint little house nestled on a 70-acre wooded lot only to find that some entity is keeping them trapped there. It got better and for awhile this psychological paranormal horror film was hitting the right notes and aside from some quibbles as the movie moved on some minor, one major (that I'll neglect to go into more detail about as I wish to keep this review spoiler-free), I ended up enjoying the film more than I had anticipated. It's currently streaming on Netflix so give it a go, just be aware that it has flaws.

Occasionally a film may fly under the radar as to how creepy and thought provoking it may be, and this film is indeed one of them. I was interested in the beginning, and unlike another reviewer, once the "one month later" screen appeared, I began to feel that a promising start may have ran out of steam, as I prefer taut films such as this one to take place in "real" time, as morning to noon, to night to next day we're with the characters, which really draws one in, and I was pleasantly surprised to see this one played out quite well. This film is well worth viewing, and I would highly recommend to anyone else looking for a creepy unnerving little film to keep to one the edge