HouseKeeping

01FilmPlot

Story:

In this suspenseful movie, a young med student finds that her brother owes a considerable amount of money to some dangerous people and needs her help to pay off the debt. She hurries back to home, despite warnings from college authorities that her scholarship can be suspended or even terminated. A friend of her finds a three-weeks job that promises to pay her a handsome amount of money, enough to get her brother out of trouble. She has to reach a house at exactly 9:00 am where her daily assignments are written on a paper which she must complete exactly at 5:00 pm. The mysterious owner of the house never shows up and only a piece of paper with written instructions forms the only way of contact between them. Her duties are seemingly quite simple like cleaning rooms and scrubbing toilets but three conditions are attached to make her eligible for the day’s pay. These conditions and some mysterious activity begins to tell on her already shattering psychological self and gradually she begins to lose her grip on reality.

Positive Points:

Adriana Solis’ performance as a troubled girl is quite impressive. Her facial expressions are very much harmonious with the role she is performing. Plot line keeps you interested because director/writer Jennifer Harrington intelligently moves the story with gradual escalation in drama. Despite irritating sounds, this film has a genuine element of thrill and suspense. The creative imagination of director deserves applause for making a movie without much dialogue that depends on solo performance of one character and which still doesn’t stray into the realm of boredom.

Negative Points:

I have watched many indie low budget movies, that fail not due to financial constraints but lack of maturity in presentation. The first six minutes of this movie will make you loose your patience. A whistle blows for first 45 seconds with blank screen, a disturbing thing that keeps repeating throughout the movie. Then we see a troubled woman on a bus whose flashbacks, that are too annoying due to background sounds, try to inform us that her brother has asked for help as he owes money to some “bad guys” and now he is in danger. There are disturbing and meaningless background sounds with a continuous stream of incomplete messages that are recorded on her cell phone. This start makes a bad impression which is not a promising way to begin a movie.

IMDb

Lucy Castillo, a young med student, has just given up a prized summer internship to bail out her troubled younger brother, Sal... again. He needs cash fast, and after being unable to find a job, Lucy reluctantly accepts the too-good-to-be-true position as a housekeeper offered to her through a friend of a friend. For only three weeks work, she will be paid enough to get Sal out of trouble. Things start to take a disturbing turn, however, as the job reveals itself to be anything but normal. Her never-seen employer seems to have a dark side, and Lucy's own haunted past begins to reappear, tormenting her. As the job spirals out of control and Sal's life hangs in the balance, Lucy's grip on reality disappears.

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