House of Bad

Well actually it's not all bad but this three girl, sister thriller is not too great either. Has a three out of ten rating here on IMDb, so will go just one notch higher. The acting and characters are certainly lively but it falls short on many fronts, including plot, script and any type of real gripping action. Just about watchable to the final, unsatisfying conclusion.

A girl is sleeping with a guy. When he falls asleep she grabs a suitcase and leaves. She meets up with two other girls and they drive to a house. The house is familiar to them. Teig who is the girl in charge collects their cell phones and announces that they will stay there for two weeks until no one is looking for them anymore. Little by little we learn what is going on.

Teig and Sirah are sisters. Lily is their half sister. Teig was imprisoned, Sirah is a stripper and Lily is a junkie. By stealing the case full of drugs they hope to make a new life for themselves in Mexico. The house is their childhood home. As Teig gets more abusive Lily can't resist the temptation of a case full of drugs and Sirah in secret sends a text message to someone.

But there's something else going on. The girls start having visions and seeing things that occurred in the past. When Teig and Sirah were little, their mom was pregnant. At some point she admitted to her husband that the kid was someone else's. Meanwhile he was cheating on her with another woman. The husband lost it. When things went wrong with her pregnancy he offered no help. And for some reason he ended up locking little Teig in the basement. Now all that pain and suffering is coming back to haunt the girls.

House of Bad is a B action/horror thriller. It features excellent and confident direction and very good acting by the sexy girls. There's a bit of violence and nudity. The story is interesting because it combines the business of stealing the drugs and hiding with a bit of the supernatural. It does get somewhat boring as usually happens with psychological horror, especially when you confine people in a room or house for most of the movie. And the occasional shaky/floating camera-work gives this movie a cheaper look than it deserves because otherwise the movie looks good and bright. Fortunately it stays away from night and rain and the usual gimmicks for the most part. House of Bad is a success for a low budget movie.

Horrible acting, horrible plot, horrible execution. This really makes me wonder what it takes to get a film financed and distributed. From the beginning shots, where the camera was jerking all over the place, to the next shots, where the camera was panning from person to person (only afford one camera, guys?) this was a joke in cinematography. I think the guy who was shooting the hand-held camera scenes had Parkinson's, no kidding. Odd thing is that the story wasn't bad. In a real director's hands with competent actors, it might have been a good flick. Yeah, I know everybody's got to start somewhere, but this definitely was NOT the place for these girls to start.

+1 Star for some dialogue near the beginning that cracked me up

+1 Star for following the rule, don't have a shower scene without nudity

-1 Star for Gutshot woman turning into Olympic athelete...

-1 Star for the believability of the whole story and the 'ghost' crap or whatever was going on wasn't really necessary for the story at all

All in all there were some good parts. The 2nd half of the movie really bogged down a LOT turning it into just nothing special

To begin with:

Heather L. Tyler: horrible, terrible acting! Hopefully I'll never see her in another movie again, unless, she pays for good acting lessons and comes back in a better movie and role, that gets her an Oscar or something acceptable.

Sadie Katz: amazingly fit and hot and a great job in such a terrible movie, so out of five on her acting I'll say is a four. Looking forward to see her again!

Cheryl Sands: good acting and potential future in the movie business.

Directors and writers, epic failure as director; writing it has to be less boring, remember is for a movie not for reading while commuting to work.

I really wanted to like this House of Mad, bad, boredom or whatever the title! This movie should have been 30 minutes shorter, I assure you even with all the screaming is a "doze off" sorry, I would recommend it to someone I dislike very much in order to ruin their evening!

By the way is time for fake reviews or people who don't know anything about movies to stay away from The Internet Movie Data Base.