House Hunting

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.

Two families visit an isolated show home only to discover that they can't leave. The house doesn't lock them in, they just can't leave the area as whichever way they turn they find themselves back at the house.

The house kindly provides food and not so kindly lots of ghostly mind games that drive a wedge between the families and each other.

Initially I found myself enjoying the film but the creators quickly ran out of ideas and it found itself in the realm of one of those horror flicks that makes the rules up as it goes along and never really explains anything.

Starring Art LaFleur this could have been something quite special if the creators had thought the whole thing through. It's like the television show Lost (2004) where it became evident the writers never had some clever ending to explain everything that happened and just went with the generic one everyone had guessed in episode 1.

The Good:

Art LaFleur

Decent start

The Bad:

Poor middle & end

House Hunting was definitely worth the watch, especially if you enjoy psychological horror indies along the lines of "Triangle" or "The Corridor".

IMDb has it miscategorized as 'Thriller' but rest assured this is straight-up horror, not thriller. There's not much gore to speak of but the supernatural aspects are clear and evident. Get it right IMDb!

Quick, spoiler-free plot summary: Marc Singer (sans eyebrows for some odd reason) leads his family to an isolated bargain property for a real estate viewing. When they get there they are joined by a second family who arrives at the same time to view the house. The second family is headed up by Art LaFleur who puts in a stellar performance as a gruff, over-protective father on the edge of sanity. The two families soon find that they cannot leave the premises, and that every turn just brings them back to the same house. As time wears on, each family member in the house experiences their own unique psychological strains and each is haunted by past tragedies or wrongdoings. The strain inevitably pits them against each other.

The unfortunate weakness of the movie was the unsatisfactory climax that didn't adequately explain the WHY of the phenomenon. Hints are given, messily, but in the end it's never fully resolved. As the credits rolled you get the sense that writer/director Eric Hurt may not have had a fully developed idea in his head after all, and that the vagueness might have come from a place of indecision or poor scriptwriting rather than a more intellectual or intentional origin.

If you can handle those films where you're left saying "It was good, but I just didn't get it", then House Hunting may be a good addition to your viewing list. It's certainly stronger and less clichéd than most of the other indies available on Netflix instant right now.

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.

Interesting topic! Not what we expected. We enjoyed it! Not too bad!