If you have ever seen the David Lynch "sitcom" Rabbits then you will know how wonderfully creepy and unsettling that is, but it will also be in your mind as you watch Domestic Living. In this a family lives inside a sitcom where some weird antics occur while the audience laughs on, often at inappropriate moments. In doing this, this short film manages to produce a pretty effective unsettling air throughout, with the excess of the film played without much fanfare or consequence within the film itself, even though to the viewer it contains sexual and violent references – all of which are implied rather than shown explicitly.
I actually enjoyed this aspect of the short film, and it did remind me of the discomfort without payoff of Rabbits. The difference comes that the film is not as good as Lynch would have done, and it does play for the excessive oddity quite hard. In particularly it doesn't always unsettle with a gentle hand, but instead has a quite heavy touch with some of its things; so for example a knife on a string in the bedroom, a seemingly disabled man giving oral pleasure to a woman as she reads, a Japanese couple seemingly presenting the sitcom from a studio, and snaps of blood-covered characters. Okay it all adds to that sense of discomfort and unease, but it almost goes too hard – especially since it doesn't pay off in a satisfying way.
For the sense of uneasy weirdness, it is worth a look, but it is not as good as it is in the odd moment here and there.