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Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our detailed reviews of festival films, virtual reality previews and other special event publications. This criticism comes from the interactive festival SXSW 2019.
It's hard to find new ways to haunt a house. And Girl on the third floor, A horror movie that was featured at the SXSW Interactive Festival in 2019 is not trying to try. It hits the clbadic rhythms of the genre, largely established by Shirley Jackson The obsession of Hill House: a protagonist with a troubled past settles into a grand old but dilapidated house with a dark secret, then discovers a malicious force dredging his personal demons.
Instead of trying to push the narrative boundaries, Girl on the third floor uses predictability to generate suspense. It involves the audience at each stage of the inevitable fall of the protagonist, producing numerous prefigurations and jump scenes with simple practical effects. Beads, mucus and bells have never been so disturbing.
What is the genre?
A haunted house story focused on slow combustion. Travis Stevens, author and director for the first time, is a long-time genre film producer, including: Kill, Big Ass Spider!, and Heart of Busterand he apparently wrote the script specifically for the house where he was filmed – very vaguely based on actual reports of hauntings there.
What is it about?
A man tries to reshape a house full of ghosts. The effort ends badly.
Specifically, Don Koch (played by former professional wrestler Phillip "CM Punk" Brooks) is a convalescent alcoholic recovering from a pregnant woman (Trieste Kelly Dunn) and a crisis in the middle of her life. Don is unemployed and is recovering from legal problems. Although his wife supports them in his own business, he buys a house in the suburbs and takes it to repair it. Despite all his efforts, pipes burst into the earth, the walls secrete a viscous substance and the balls seem to appear spontaneously around cupboards and stairs.
As if that was not enough of a red flag, his new neighbors offer warnings veiled: "this house seems to be bad news for heterobadual men," says a local bartender. Its meaning soon becomes clear to the public, if not to Don. A mysterious and seductive young woman begins to hang around the house and, after a night spent with Don, she refuses to stay away. At the same time, his renovations reveal hidden rooms and crevices, alluding to the past of the house.
What is it? really sure?
Girl on the third floor binds the common trope of "haunted house renovation" – seen more recently in Hill House adaptation – to the gendered subtext of construction work. The film clearly shows that Don is trying to recover a lost sense of male power and the utility of offsetting his unemployment, which drives him to refuse his wife's requests for help. In turn, he uses his self-imposed suffering as an excuse to behave badly, saying that he has "earned" some vices with his hard work.
That does not make Don a monster, he's an affable guy who seems to really love his wife. But it's easy for the house to tackle its faults, pushing it toward arrogance, right, and ultimately fate.
Is it good?
Girl on the third floorThe end of this sentence could shock some people, as there is a sudden change of style and exposure that raises almost more questions than answers. But he also proposes a catharsis in a sober, sometimes tense history.
Rather than being an excuse to bring a character to a haunted place, Don's repairs occupy much of the movie – if you have to repair a hole in the drywall, Girl on the third floor is not a bad tutorial. The fundamental and supernatural rot of the house appears from the first minutes of the film, long before we know what's wrong with it. It lays the foundation for increasingly strange phenomena, building grotesque surrealism at its peak.
Watch the methodical repairs also offers the public a simple way to communicate with Don, who is objectively a fool, but who remains friendly. Brooks is down-to-earth and charismatic in this role. He embodies Don as a solid and worthy guy, always so precarious to the insurance, a tragic figure more than a fright that pulls out of the game.
Don's sympathy makes the genre's exploration of the film more nuanced than it seems. Girl on the third floor deals mainly with the toxic masculinity and rage of women, two subjects that have recently made the rounds of pop-cultural culture. But it is mostly a character falling into a trap because of his own weaknesses, which correspond to some ugly masculine stereotypes. And thanks to the soundtrack of Big Black's founder, Steve Albini, to some great visual stuff and a talent for scary fears, even if they are not surprising, the saga is as frightening as it is. should be.
What should be noted?
Girl on the third floor deserves a R rating mainly for gore – which unfolds reasonably judiciously, but hits hard when that happens.
How can I actually watch it?
Girl on the third floor does not seem to have firm distribution plans, but if it's like some of the movies produced by Stevens, there could be a limited theatrical launch combined with a video-on-demand movie – or it could still be picked up by a service streaming.
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