Saturday, April 30, 2011

Jason goes to SFIFF--Day 9

Yup, I skipped a few days there. I had to take a quick business trip to Vancouver, but I got back last night in time to have a few beers at the festival lounge and then catch the late show world premiere screening of THE SELLING.

THE SELLING is a horror-comedy about real estate and haunted houses, made mostly by filmmakers with a background in sketch comedy (there are significant connections to Sketchfest here). As such, the comedy can best be described as broad, and the comedy is the focus here, not the horror (true horror fans note, this movie won't even try to scare you). The hero is Richard Scarry (not the child's book author, but writer Gariel Diani), an overly nice real estate agent whose mom is in the hospital with cancer. His partner (in business, they're not a couple) is Dave (Jonathan Klein), and their nemesis is manipulative backstabber Mary Best (Janet Varney). At least, she is their nemesis until she unloads a house on them that they can fix up and flip to make money for Scarry's mom's treatment. Sure, she reveals that a serial killer, the Sleepstalker, lived there. What she doesn't reveal is that the house is still haunted--by his victims and by some Ancient Unnamed Evil. The AUE becomes their new nemesis, and wacky hijinks ensue. Some of it very funny (like when a pair of witches are looking specifically to buy a haunted house, and the ghosts just don't cooperate. He has to act out the bleeding walls and the closet that sometimes contains a portal to another world). Other lines kinda fall flat ("We're gonna need a bigger goat"). But all in all it was fun and funny, and it was good to see local filmmakers do well.

Running Time: 92 minutes
My Total Minutes: 233,765

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