I have been talking about and searching for this darn movie for years! I watched it a good while ago, like 10 years or more. No matter how I described it, or who I told about it, no one could remember ever seeing it, hearing about it, or even watching a trailer for it. I felt like I was losing what was left of my already rapidly fraying sanity.
And then, one night, with the patience and help of AI, I found it. I was beyond ecstatic. I was not crazy! Well at least not crazy in that way. We will not talk about any other kind. I had found the movie that had haunted me for over a decade.
The House of Good and Evil.
I immediately sat down and watched it.
This is the IMDB write up for it.
Firefighter Chris Conley buys an isolated old house in the middle of nowhere with neither telephone nor electricity and moves with his estranged wife Maggie, expecting to save their marriage and start a new life. A few months prior, Maggie was pregnant and lost their baby of 8 months when Chris pushed her during an argument. The real estate agent Rob Bradley explains that the house is split into two and Maggie and Chris will need to share the space with the tenants Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, for at least one more month when the old couple will then leave. Chris finds a job in the nearest town and leaves the unstable Maggie alone to unpack and decorate the house. Maggie overhears a telephone and weird noises in the house and soon she meets Mrs. Anderson and learns that Mr. Anderson is an abusive husband like she believes Chris is.
I may or may not have edited the write up on IMDB. It left a lot to be desired. But that is besides the point, right?
The write up explains what you see play out. Kind of. I will give a trigger warning and a spoiler alert.
You have been warned.
If your still reading, here we go!
The story starts out as any other. Married couple, squabbling in New York and the husband is a real piece of work. He shoves his heavily pregnant wife to the floor, and she goes into premature labor. Now, in this day and age, even in 2013, an 8-month gestation baby would survive. My oldest was much younger and is thriving and being an ass well into his thirty's now. But that would not have helped the storyline if the baby had lived. So, goodbye baby. Chris, the husband, moves his wife Maggie out into a beautiful big old country house. Way out in the middle of nowhere. Now, I would think that this would have been a red flag to dear old Maggie, but she went along willingly. The night they move in, Chris tries to force himself on Maggie, claiming it has been long enough that her grieving should be done now, and she needed to perform her wifely duties. See? Jerk wad. Anyway, the next morning, Chris is very hung over and Maggie is very mad. A real switch from the abused wife you were expecting. The one cowering on the floor crying the night before. The next morning, she is a regular spitfire, pissed at Chris for overindulging the night before. He shows her how to keep the generator running and tells her that she better be frugal with her gas for it and not forget to start it at dusk. Then he is off to his firefighting job. So, we think.
As the movie progresses, you really get a sense of Maggie's instability. She hears a baby crying, a telephone ringing, when she had been told that the line was broken and there is no phone. So, she bakes a pie for Mrs. Anderson in the hopes that she can meet her and have access to her phone.
She does and finds out that her life and Mrs. Anderson's life are remarkably similar.
She is supposed to go to the top of the hill every day at 4 to receive a call from Chris on the cell phone she has, but for some reason she keeps missing the calls, or arriving late, or not going at all. It all starts to become very suspicious. Nothing, as you find out at the end of the movie, is what it has seemed.
Maggie is very disturbed.
The acting is rather good, and the story is definitely one that keeps you watching. You keep wondering all through the movie why Maggie stays, and why does she goad Chris into arguments knowing how they will end up.
Then you find out.
I am not going to tell you that. But I will tell you to watch this movie. It all takes place in or around the house. The cast is minimal, but it does not drag. Maggie the main character, holds the screen and the scene with such acuity. The actress is amazing and the slow decent into madness is portrayed with such beauty you almost miss it happening. Which makes the ending such a shock.
Go, watch it.
I said so.
Until the next movie
Sarcastically Cynical Sally