The Mistress

No pun intended - this really goes deep diving into quite a few cliches. One of them being the coming and staying in a house that had quite a lot of problems and issues. There is some horror history or rather past to it ... I do wonder if the people going into this should not reconsider. Same goes for anyone who might have it in for me - that's what I am kind of thinking when reviews go awol ... but here we are.

But they act like every other horror family heading to their doom ... or are they? Well you have to watch the movie to find out of course. I thought the movie did a few clever things. You may know where it is heading and maybe can even guess a major twist - but even if you do I feel the movie is strong enough to work on its merits. It is not superb or awesome or whatever ... but it is more than decent ... especially if you are into horror movies. Acting is also quite nice to say the least.

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.

I've watched a lot of bad indie horror. Terrible indie horror even. I can tolerate a lot - bad effects, lousy acting, bad dialogue...all forgiveable. Boring, however, is another matter altogether. That brings us to The Mistress, a movie that makes the lamest Lifetime movie seem thrilling and fresh. It would be impossible to include any spoilers in this review as there is virtually nothing to spoil. Even the "big twist" that I'm certain the screenwriter was very proud of is telegraphed for most of the excruciatingly long runtime. I could imagine what sort of horrible torture I would have to be threatened with that could get me to sit through this again.

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.

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.