House of Bad (2013)

A girl is sleeping with a guy. When he falls asleep she grabs a suitcase and leaves. She meets up with two other girls and they drive to a house. The house is familiar to them. Teig who is the girl in charge collects their cell phones and announces that they will stay there for two weeks until no one is looking for them anymore. Little by little we learn what is going on.Teig and Sirah are sisters. Lily is their half sister. Teig was imprisoned, Sirah is a stripper and Lily is a junkie. By stealing the case full of drugs they hope to make a new life for themselves in Mexico. The house is their childhood home. As Teig gets more abusive Lily can't resist the temptation of a case full of drugs and Sirah in secret sends a text message to someone.But there's something else going on. The girls start having visions and seeing things that occurred in the past. When Teig and Sirah were little, their mom was pregnant. At some point she admitted to her husband that the kid was someone else's. Meanwhile he was cheating on her with another woman. The husband lost it. When things went wrong with her pregnancy he offered no help. And for some reason he ended up locking little Teig in the basement. Now all that pain and suffering is coming back to haunt the girls.House of Bad is a B action/horror thriller. It features excellent and confident direction and very good acting by the sexy girls. There's a bit of violence and nudity. The story is interesting because it combines the business of stealing the drugs and hiding with a bit of the supernatural. It does get somewhat boring as usually happens with psychological horror, especially when you confine people in a room or house for most of the movie. And the occasional shaky/floating camera-work gives this movie a cheaper look than it deserves because otherwise the movie looks good and bright. Fortunately it stays away from night and rain and the usual gimmicks for the most part. House of Bad is a success for a low budget movie.

To begin with: Heather L. Tyler: horrible, terrible acting! Hopefully I'll never see her in another movie again, unless, she pays for good acting lessons and comes back in a better movie and role, that gets her an Oscar or something acceptable.Sadie Katz: amazingly fit and hot and a great job in such a terrible movie, so out of five on her acting I'll say is a four. Looking forward to see her again! Cheryl Sands: good acting and potential future in the movie business.Directors and writers, epic failure as director; writing it has to be less boring, remember is for a movie not for reading while commuting to work.I really wanted to like this House of Mad, bad, boredom or whatever the title! This movie should have been 30 minutes shorter, I assure you even with all the screaming is a "doze off" sorry, I would recommend it to someone I dislike very much in order to ruin their evening! By the way is time for fake reviews or people who don't know anything about movies to stay away from The Internet Movie Data Base.

Bias out front. I know the director and I shot stills for this flick. Having said that I wasn't on set and I didn't read he script or know the story going into watching the film.About 10 minutes in and I figured I knew what would play out and about 30 minutes in I had to change that assessment. By the time the movie ended I found myself glad that I was wrong both times.It wasn't your typical "gotcha" flick that tries to waste your time with swelling music and false starts. Nor was it a simple heist/revenge story. There's more depth and character development than you get in a lot of movies these days.I enjoyed the flick mostly because it was nice to see a truly low budget film, not some multi-million dollar "independent" film, keep my interest until the end. I tend to space out when a movie bores me or is too predicable and neither applies with "House of Bad".Jim Townes did a great job here and I'm glad to have seen it. To explain my "6" rating. That's the "I Liked it" rating. 8 would have been one of my favorites and 10 would be a perfect movie. I only use multiples of 2 for my ratings. I'm not going to blow smoke because I think Jim is a great guy, I liked the film and rated it accordingly.

Sure, you could go and spend x amount of your hard-earned dollars to go and see the most recent blockbuster playing in an overcrowded theater near you. That's your every right. But have you ever considered some of those lesser known names? Some that aren't on the Hollywood A-list? You know, one of those movies you come across on Netflix but won't watch because you don't know who made it/stars in it? You might be surprised what is out there. To which proves this little film. Shot in a mere 8 days with a budget which is a fraction of a typical blockbuster, House of Bad focuses on three siblings returning to their elderly home after one of the sisters steals a large suitcase filled with heroin from her boyfriend. Little do they know, the house that was once their childhood home, is now confronting the girls with a cruel past.With a few eerie scenes, underlined by a great soundtrack (courtesy of Terry Huud) and several great suspense moments you could easily classify this as a thriller/mild horror. Yet the film has more to offer. The characters are well explained, with the family history as a central plot to the movie, you can find yourself caring for the characters. Director/co-writer Jim Towns clearly did a great job making this, especially considering the ridiculous small amount of time and money that was put into this.If you get a chance to watch this, go for it. It's a great 1.36h ride.4/5. Independent cinema. Done right.