Movie Review: For Sale
Written by Grady Fiorio Original Publishing Date: May 16th, 2024 Rating 2/5
Re-possessed
For Sale
Director Christopher Schrack Runtime 1 Hr 55 Min Format Digital (Streaming) Release Date 2024
Selling a haunted house can be like trying to get somebody to watch a low-budget movie. You know there are bumps and creaks that shouldn’t be there, but you smile it off anyway because it’s time to make a deal. Unfortunately for director Christopher Schrack, For Sale has too many skeletons in the closet to keep audiences hooked for its bloated runtime. Telling the story of skeezy salesman Mason McGinness, McGinness finds himself in a bind when he loses his wife and job at a car dealership after one too many slip-ups. When he finally finds a job at a real estate agency, McGinness is tasked with the unenviable task of selling a haunted house.
I’ll be honest with you, when I first heard For Sale’s premise, I thought it was genius. It’s as if you stuck Saul Goodman inside of Paranormal Activity. The perfect setup for a solid horror comedy, something quite rare these days. But For Sale isn’t scary or clever enough to live up to that idea. For Sale falls into many of the usual trappings of ultra-low-budget filmmaking. Flat lighting, bad pacing, a toss-up of performances, and a soundtrack that screams “Audio Jungle”. While I can normally excuse low-budget issues, For Sale starts to become a real eye-sore with nearly all the production design being empty white walls, against white wardrobes, and white buildings. There’s a notable lack of texture missing from the visuals and the sound design. As expected, there’s a lot of bad ADR and questionable sound mixing. Thankfully, the sound quality itself isn’t terrible, but the real kicker here is the pacing. The whole thing runs way too long at just under two hours, without enough style or texture to make up for the downtime. For example, there’s a four-minute-long sequence of a character walking around an empty house, looking at empty rooms, with little in the way of sound or visuals to keep us engaged. This could have easily been 30 seconds and still sold the idea. Nearly the whole film is like this. Every shot seems to go on for just a few beats too long, with it all adding up pretty quickly. If this was a fast-paced 80 minutes and focused on being quick and quirky, it could have been a real knockout. What this really could’ve made for, was a killer short.
For Sale is a film that constantly feels like it’s close, but never there. It’s clever, but not clever enough. It’s spooky, but never spooky enough. All the seeds for something great are there, but the tree never fully sprouts. Some moments do work, particularly Mason’s meeting with a questionable psychic. It’s both funny and a tone-setter, working to the film's low-budget strengths. It shows what this movie could’ve been with a sharper script and a little more time in post-production. It just sucks that at this point, we’re nearly an hour into the film, before introducing the best character in the film. What sucks, even more, is that less than 30 minutes later (SPOILERS) that character is dead. It’s a baffling choice, and it leaves For Sale feeling like a GPS constantly rerouting, only to find itself on an even bumpier road. However, for everything that doesn’t work, there are a few elements that do. Namely Andrew Roth as McGinness, and Corinne Britti as the aforementioned psychic, Claire. They’re clearly the ones here giving it their all, and when on screen together, their chemistry is great. Together they bring out the best elements of the script and got a few solid laughs out of me. While not perfect, I could see a reworked film focused on them being a lot of fun.
So is For Sale worth your time? It’s hard to say. For Sale presents a strong concept, but ultimately gets lost amongst poor pacing, bad sound design, and a script that feels like it’s simultaneously trying too hard and not hard enough. If you’re into low-budget films, quirky stories, and you can forgive the pacing and shortcomings, it’s not a terrible time, but it’s hard to recommend when there’s a better selection of films available instantly, right in the palm of your hand.
