Rent Girl on the Third Floor (2019)
2.5 of 5 from 74 ratings
1h 32min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Bursting pipes, rotting walls, and unidentifiable slime were not what Don Koch (WWE legend Phil "CM Punk" Brooks) expected when he convinced his wife, Liz (Trieste Kelly Dunn), that he could rehab their new Victorian home himself. In over his head, under duress, and tempted by his old weaknesses, Don soon discovers that the house has its own dark, sordid history and won't be so easy to renovate after all...
- Actors:
- CM Punk, Trieste Kelly Dunn, Sarah Brooks, Elissa Dowling, Karen Woditsch, Travis Delgado, Marshall Bean, Anish Jethmalani, Bishop Stevens, Tonya Kay, Eileah Pyrzynski, Steve Pavlik, Phil Senjanin
- Directors:
- Travis Stevens
- Producers:
- Travis Stevens, Giles Edwards, Greg Newman, Nicola Goelzhaeuser
- Writers:
- Trent Haaga, Paul Johnstone, Ben Parker, Travis Stevens
- Genres:
- Horror
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 09/03/2020
- Run Time:
- 92 minutes
- Languages:
- English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0, English LPCM Stereo
- Subtitles:
- English Hard of Hearing
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 1.78:1 / 16:9
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Audio Commentary with Director and Co-Writer, Travis Stevens
- Trailer
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Reviews (1) of Girl on the Third Floor
Unusual but interesting horror ... - Girl on the Third Floor review by NP
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the nastiest of them all? Hot-tempered philanderer Don (CM Punk, under his real name Phil Brooks)? He has a one-night stand while his pregnant wife is away working to keep him in money, and he explains the affair by saying ‘it is what it is’. Or maybe it’s sultry temptress Sarah (Sarah Brooks) who, knowing his marital situation, is more than happy to get her leg over? Certainly, it isn’t Cooper, his Alsatian, whose every glare can either be charming, intimidatory, funny or just plain hungry.
Whatever the deficiencies in the characters, they are at least interesting, and the continual haunted mischief of the house he is trying to renovate (“Who paints a room pink?”) is well-staged and eerily relentless. The unravelling story is strangely compelling and the flawed characters are well played. Director Travis Stevens does a good job of piling on the menace, and if it isn’t particularly scary, it is certainly brutal and something that makes an impression. I like the way Don’s beloved death metal music seeps into the incidental, providing quite a unique score.
Like Stevens’ 2015 film, ‘We Are Still Here’ (a favourite of mine), ‘Girl on the Third Floor’ leaves us with questions only generally skirted over – which I have no problem with. I’m not a fan of undoing all the carefully built-up atmosphere by explaining everything away, but we’re made to wait until near the end before Don’s behaviour is – partially – explained. My score is 7 out of 10.
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Critic review
Girl on the Third Floor review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso
An easy criticism of The Girl on the Third Floor is that its a bit on the nose for its message of home wrecking. An expecting father ventures to a small town to renovate a house that is in need of repair, only for it to crumble around him while he cheats on his wife. Blunt, perhaps, but with the alternate route being the standard haunted house bout of frights and ghosts, I’m 100% okay with this kinda film leaning hard into that allegory.
CM Punk perfectly plays the role of the tattooed and troubled soon-to-be father, Don. He has a criminal past and plenty of tattoos to show for it. He brings along his dog to keep him company while he repairs the house, giving his pregnant wife Liz updates via his phone. The house is no easy fixer-upper. Don starts noticing strange holes in the wall, gunk in the pipes, and even an extra floor when the ceiling mysteriously caves in. There’s a history behind such a strange place, of course, and it’s not at all surprising that his new home used to be a brothel with a dark past. We even get the obligatory local elder to relay the history and community akin to Pet Semetary.
But Don is not so bothered by this as he’s more concerned with finishing up the house. He’s also horny and this leads to him flirting with a local girl who keeps him company in the house. By the time Don’s friend arrives to give him extra help, the girl won’t leave, popping up again and again. Of course, she’s more than just some girl for Don to have a fling with. I doubt it’s a spoiler or surprise to anyone that she’s a dark spirit of a force that still lingers in the household. The ghosts will continue to kill and do all manner of haunted house gross-out until the spirits have been laid properly to rest.
The film slowly worked its magic on me by focusing almost exclusively on the psychological for its first two acts. We get to know Don enough to understand him when he messes up and feel the odd surreal nature of the small town he has chosen to settle down. As Don’s fling won’t leave his life, the house gets worse. Weird goo oozes out of electrical sockets. Mysterious marbles are shoved out of gross orifices in the structure. And, of course, you know something awful is happening to that dog.
By the time the film shifts into straight supernatural territory by its third act, dropping the psychological aspect of Don doubting himself in a swirl of regrets, I was surprised how much I dug it. The digusting amount of blood and gore is pretty shocking and effective. There’s a creative aspect with one ghost of a disfigured face that kills her victims with psychic marbles, worming into the skin and forcing victims to cut them out as they roll their way up to the brain. Nasty stuff and pretty surprising for how early some of the more gruesome aspects come about. It’s such an effective build that it’s only a little disappointing that the film ends in the same way most haunted house films resolve.
The Girl on the Third Floor thankfully fixes up the haunted house genre into something a bit more than the expected with some fine performances and even finer frights.