The Mistress

I was hoping the writer & director was also the lead actor, since that would explain a lot about 'The Mistress'. This movie has levels of bad to it, starting with the premise, which is backwards.

Normally with a haunted house movie, you find out the house is haunted, and then the climax revolves around the history of the ghost, which is usually the key to the protagonist's victory. This movie STARTS with the explanation about the ghost and then elaborates on the life of the ghost while ghost haunting stuff unfolds.

It's anticlimactic, then combine it with a slow pace, sleep-inducing music, poor lighting, monotone line delivery of passionate admissions of love, boring relationships and 2-D characters, you've got yourself 'The Mistress'. I'm guessing the budget was low, so hopefully this film did what it needed to do in terms of providing streaming catalog content and getting some people experience that leads to better opportunities.

The basic story of the movie is really good, couple move into haunted house.....he has had a stalker.....overbearing neighbour.......troubled writer, etc, etc.

John Magaro is excellent as the writer, the interplay between the dreams and real life is good enough and the direction leans heavily on Hitchcock, Giallo and, at times, Kubrick for inspiration.

However the issues come with the execution. The wife of our 'protagonist' is terrible. Absolutely no chemistry with her husband (she may get on well with the furniture as she is that wooden). Several scenes seem to have been created without consideration to the rest of the movie. The wife is angry one minute and cheerful the next, the angry neighbour is angry, errrr.......because? And the pacing is so off it feels like a waltz.....slow, slow, quick quick slow.

Most boring newlyweds move into a unique Victorian house, and yes, you guessed it, it's haunted by boring normcores who conveniently are vintage collectors and costume designers to fit perfectly into the tropes needed for the script.

Oh, we found a plate camera in the attic. Let me go and develop the film in my expensive little cellar and print some unprintable pictures from 1895 for you, you know, I love old crinkets! Wow, I was able to obtain a solid image from the 120 year old plate and look! I wonder who this lady is... And the movie unravels below expectations.

The best characters in the movie were Dawn, her boyfriend, and Rimbaud, the dog. Parker needs to get some backbone and acting classes.

Obviously some money spent on this but shame about the story, script, acting and a million cliches. Almost a film school graduation project.

Cliches abound with old house, cellar with boiler, rocking chair in attic, old letters etc discovered, attractive neighbour, newly weds, the classic coming down the stairs in the middle of the night to discover the old phonograph playing etc the list is unending!

This may have worked as a 20 min short but dragging it out as a,feature was never going to work.

The camera work again is cliched trying to be clever but missing every time. Sorry but dreadful.

There was a more interesting plot with the the blond thot neighbor and the husband, me thinking she would seduce him over the wife only to be subverted for a haunted house plot twist with the wife being the hero; the most boring , bland, annoying, shallow, oblivious, unappealing, useless character in the entire movie. The lace front wig on the best friend was trash. The black women seemed more like trophy wives rather than actual characters. They might have have well been foreign-owned mail order wives from thailand. The plot seemed more consumable following the husband and in figuruing out why hes being stalked or whatever but then the cinematography got more and more confusing as it went on. Also, only white people died or bled which was unbelivable.