For anyone who has ever bought or sold a house, you know how harrowing an experience it can be. But imagine you are a good natured realtor who always puts his client's financial welfare above your own commission, trying to flip a house to pay for your ailing mother's treatment, only to find out it's haunted? Worse yet, the house is fighting you every step of the way to find a buyer, even a buyer who wants the house because it's haunted? The closing night feature for this year's Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival (MIFFF) The Selling is the the story of Richard Scarry (not the children's book author), a man living this exact nightmare.
Richard and his co-worker and friend Dave are tricked into buying the house from another agent in their office, Mary Best. While starting to prepare the house for viewing, Richard is confronted by one of accused killer Oliver Crandell's victims in the house's attic, and so begins a series of classic horror film hyjinx, including bleeding walls, a closet that is portal to the spirit world and of course cabinets opening on their own.
What sets The Selling apart from other horror comedy films is that is balances the horror with comedy without putting on a false sense of intellectual superiority like the Scream series or making fun of and insulting the viewer like the Scary Movie series. With a combination of witty, subtle one liners like "Don't be a Cameron Frye" to Richard's mother being inhabited by the house's evil spirit in the hospital, The Selling is a film where you laugh and jump in your seat in what can only be described as an emotional ballet that leaves you feeling that the good guy doesn't always have to finish last.
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