jmhyrczyk
Housekeeping pushes the boundaries of cinema. While telling a relatively simple story involving a medical student who was to bail out her brother, the director uses a complex visual and auditory language to put the viewer into the main character's POV. The style is reminiscent of the work of the great Tony Scott and Danny Boyle. Housekeeping is extremely impressive considering it's the director's first feature, clearly made with limited means. It's thrilling to see a young director so invested in experimenting with the aesthetics of cinema. We can only hope that Jennifer Harrington goes on to make bigger movies and we can look back on Housekeeping as her version of Christopher Nolan's Following or Gus Van Sant's Mala Noche, which are both no-budget first features.At the same time, Housekeeping is fascinating examination of themes of class and race in Los Angeles. But, it's never heavy-handed and in fact, is quite scary at times! I cannot recommend this movie enough! It's a must-see.
InDyingArms
"Afterdark" in all honesty never exactly produced for what they supposedly stood for - that being "shocking" or .. even really good films. This film has a large example of just that, as "Housekeeping" showed itself as a boring, and extremely long film that seemed to have no end. This film had many flaws, and it's hype is unbelievable. The story of this film; A girl, now having to help with her brother, as well as herself, in need of money gets a job for this crazy woman as a housekeeper. Things progress to get worse, secrets are uncovered, etc. It's been done before, and this movie seems to just make that clichéd statement standout further than it was already presented as. It seemed extremely dull, offering not much at all to call unique, or possibly new. Instead, we are given a clichéd story that .. is just that. No other real words to exactly describe it. Just another cliché, yet slightly more dull. The visual effects, or cinematography just made that even worse, topping it off with ugly, depressing-like color filters that may seemed nicer, but in reality, to us audience looked simply terrible, too bright, or too dark. Toward the characters, moving on, once again, there's nothing special about them. Through out this entire movie, the main character has literally nothing to say, and remains a complete mute through out this entire film, of which got a bit annoying, and even confusing at times. The film tried adding some other characters, including a brother of which is in deep trouble financially; the said character came off extremely annoying, through out the movie playing constant voice messages of him speaking loudly into the phone. The acting of which we actually saw, that being the main actress, even without speech wasn't great at all. Points of which she was supposedly scared, or terrified by certain sights came off as amateur, and even ridiculous at points. Once again, knowing she barely said anything it got extremely annoying seeing the movie constantly pan to her sleeping, waking up, going to the house, over, and over again. - Moving on with the film, the story completely drains all patients, and hope of it getting better as it takes an even bigger clichéd turn with the story.. "My family died in a freak accident, I have nightmares" We've seen this before. On top of that the movie bugs the living crap out of us with constant, matter of second clips of the accident with an EVEN LOUDER volume than usual, instead of adding tension, or even scaring us. It just falls off as annoying, and buggy as crap!To end it here. This was utter crap. I don't judge films on their budget, as some low budget films have been quite good. But when the film adds annoying clichés, horrid qualities, showing little, to no effort whatsoever, horrible ideas that may of seemed good, and just utter, boring, and terrible pacing.. it's atrocious. This film was just hard to continue, it fell off flat, and boring.. and simply dropped any, to all interest straight down the drain. I would not recommend this at all, don't even bother with this, you'll throw yourself into a suicide of interest.
