Girl on the Third Floor (2019)

February 24, 2020 3:04 PM

A husband with a bad track record tries to renovate a dilapidated old Victorian home for his growing family, only to learn that the house has other plans.

Written and directed by Travis Stevens. Starring CM Punk, Trieste Kelly Dunn. Music (at least partly) by Steve Albini.

Currently available in the US on Netflix and for digital rental on YouTube, Google, etc.

posted by DirtyOldTown (6 comments total)

I thought it was mediocre which disappointed me because I'm both a big horror person and a fan of Trieste Kelly Dunn from Banshee days. But it just wasn't actually scary?

I admit it's gotten tougher to scare me these days but you gotta at least try.
posted by Justinian at 4:46 PM on February 24, 2020 [1 favorite]

Thanks for letting me know this is on Netflix now. It was playing at a film festival last year, and I wanted to go but was sick and missed it.
posted by miss-lapin at 3:01 AM on February 25, 2020

I saw this last fall at a festival. I don't watch wrestling, so while I'd heard of CM Punk, I didn't recognize him; I was like, who is this guy who's like half Bruce Campbell, half Henry Rollins? The film has a lot of atmosphere, especially in the first hour. It suffers in the last act, as it becomes clear the story doesn't make a lot of sense (all I can convey for sure is that someone really, really liked The Changeling), but I did enjoy it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:46 AM on February 25, 2020 [1 favorite]

CM Punk isn't a terrible actor, but he's saddled with making us want to follow a character who is fundamentally unlikable through 3/4s of a movie, and for me he didn't pull it off. If they'd somehow found a way to tell the same story fully from Trieste Kelly Dunn's character's perspective I could have been along for the ride more...Maybe have her show up and piece together what happened little by little, with some flashbacks? Not sure.
posted by doctornecessiter at 4:46 AM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

I totally agree with you doctornecessiter in terms of the pov. Don wasn't much of a character, but even so the shift from him to Liz as the main character was awkward

To me, the writing was a really weak point. The characters were all flat and the plot was predictable. What could have saved this movie for me is going on all full on cheesiness. Like Evil Dead meets Amnityville.

Sadly, to me the concept of the opposing two houses "watching" each other was really interesting, but totally unexplored. The idea of Hill House vs a "good" House seems like a really hard thing to do in film, but an interesting concept.
posted by miss-lapin at 6:50 AM on February 26, 2020

Oh I forgot to add, CM Punk looked more to me like a cross between Bruce Campbell and Ted Raimi.
posted by miss-lapin at 9:28 AM on February 26, 2020