Housekeeping

This movie is pure trash. No dialogue except what you hear through an answering machine, which is meant to narrate the story since they think not having their characters speak is a novel idea.

I paid pretty close attention to this and still am not sure what it was about. There was a fire and the main girl had rescued her brother while possibly not rescuing someone else. She needs now to clean a house for 3 weeks for some unknown person (possibly a victim's family member in the fire?) in order to keep her brother out of trouble. He appears to be being held captive and tortured. I guess.

She has dreams but then is not dreaming? I don't get. Near the end, she is suddenly tied up in a car but I have no clue how this happened or who did this to her. But it doesn't matter because 2 minutes later she wakes up tied up on her couch and slips right out of the knots. It ends by stating revenge is a bi***. No, this move is a bi*** and I am really hoping potential viewers are reading this in advance and will spare 90 minutes of their life. If there was law enforcement in the movie world, this one would be guilty of so many crimes. It is definitely criminal. BTW, I did not click the spoiler icon because I do not know if I spoiled anything or if there was even anything to spoil.

Housekeeping pushes the boundaries of cinema. While telling a relatively simple story involving a medical student who was to bail out her brother, the director uses a complex visual and auditory language to put the viewer into the main character's POV.

The style is reminiscent of the work of the great Tony Scott and Danny Boyle. Housekeeping is extremely impressive considering it's the director's first feature, clearly made with limited means. It's thrilling to see a young director so invested in experimenting with the aesthetics of cinema. We can only hope that Jennifer Harrington goes on to make bigger movies and we can look back on Housekeeping as her version of Christopher Nolan's Following or Gus Van Sant's Mala Noche, which are both no-budget first features.

At the same time, Housekeeping is fascinating examination of themes of class and race in Los Angeles. But, it's never heavy-handed and in fact, is quite scary at times! I cannot recommend this movie enough! It's a must-see.

Housekeeping belongs in the pantheon of the cerebral filmmaking that featured prominently in the early aughts (like Mike Figgis' Timecode and Shane Carruth's Primer) that really made cinema engaging in the post-American-Eccentric wake. Its low-fi, observational feel is intense and follows a single character through most of the movie. It is a film that begets introspection and is wonderfully paranoid in the tradition of early 1970s neorealist revival and cinéma vérité. Worth checking out for the performance and direction alone.

This is the worst movie I have ever seen. This was not even a movie. This is worse than Sci Fi High and Return of the Boogeyman. No plot. No entertainment whatsoever. People are watching this movie on repeat in hell.

This movie is actual garbage in my opinion half the movie is just talking over non moving pictures and I would much rather watch paint dry than be subjected to this terrible movie, this movie is actually my least favorite movie of all time