movie review: For Sale by Owner

I just finished watching For Sale by Owner, a movie I've been looking forward to for a long time. Add a creepy subject matter (haunted houses, usually good for a fun time), a good supporting cast of reliable character actors, and the indie-cred of Port Pictures, and you've got a movie with a lot of promise. Unfortunately, the whole thing was directed by Robert J. Wilson and written by Scott Cooper, two filmmakers who, judging from this film, have more talent than competence; in other words, their work shows promise, but they really need to attend a couple of basic filmmaking and screenwriting courses (a criticism, by the way, which I've never made in any of my reviews before).

The movie starts so abruptly, and so awkwardly, that I swear I thought I was watching a movie preview, and didn't realize until the second scene that, oh wait, the actual movie's started. I realize that this sounds like an odd complaint, but all I can say is, at the risk of repeating myself, that's exactly how the film's prologue plays out, like an MPAA movie preview.

Then we meet the main characters, in a couple of scenes with distractingly artificial audio. Usually, when we talk about bad audio dubbing, we think of Asian films whose translated dialogue doesn't synch with movement of the actors' lips. Here, the audio is synchronized perfectly, but we get scenes which take place outside, that sound exactly like two actors talking to each other in a recording studio. Isn't it a relatively simple fix to alter the resonance so we don't get that "hey they're clearly inside" feel to it? I've seen YouTube backyard productions with better audio than this. (Fortunately, this audio problem doesn't last longer than a couple of brief scenes.)

The three main characters are schoolteacher Anna Ferrier; her fiance, protagonist James Wilson "Will" Custis; and her father, archeologist/ historian Clive Ferrier. Clive is played by Tom Skerrit in a performance that has become Skerritt's unique specialty, as a soft-spoken man who delivers his insults so gently you almost have to do a double-take to realize that what he just said qualifies him as an S.O.B. There's a reason Skerritt keeps playing this kind of character -- because he does it so well.

One of the subjects of these introductory scenes is Anna's revelation that she is pregnant. It plays out as a scene we've seen in countless movies before, the only difference being that here, it turns out to be completely pointless, since the pregnancy has zero relevance to the rest of the plot, and isn't ever mentioned again.

The other subject of these scenes is the introduction of Clive, to establish that he hates Will for reasons that are much more vague than, I suspect, the writers intended. Best as I can figure, he just thinks Will isn't good enough for his daughter, but the movie awkwardly hints that he has a specific reason for feeling this way, yet never reveals what that reason is.

The story is set into motion when Will stumbles upon the real estate classified ad mentioned in the title. Despite the fact that Anna and Will have no reason to move, Will decides to follow a whim by investigating. He instantly falls in love with the house, which looks like a fixer-upper, but is huge and being sold at a real bargain. The owner, Ferlin Smith, claims to be a direct descendant of the legendary Captain John Smith, and also claims that the house has been in the family since colonial times. Smith is played by Kris Kristofferson, in another one of his "just a friendly country boy" roles. For all his faults, director Wilson at least knows how to cast his guest stars.

Will sets about renovating the house on his own. His occasional trips into town allows him, and the viewer, to meet the other key supporting players, most of them highly cliched stock characters. There's the clueless but well-meaning sheriff played by Tom Bower, the menacing redneck mechanic played by Skeet Ulrich (unrecognizable behind a long, graying beard), and the friendly local handyman played by the always likable Frankie Faison.

If I had to describe this movie in just one word, it would be "unfocused." Screenwriter Cooper presents us with quite a few intriguing storylines, but every time we start to get wrapped up in one narrative, the movie bounces to the next. The story that is at the center of the others, and the one that plays out most effectively, is the haunting. But then there are also no less than five subplots:

1. The mystery of Ferlin Smith: Everyone in town insists that the only Ferlin Smith that ever lived in the area died years ago. So who was the guy who sold the house to Will? Was he an impostor? A ghost? A figment of Will's imagination? All three possibilities are hinted at, but we're never given a definitive answer.

2. The enigma of the house's title deed: It disappears mysteriously, never to turn up again. Considering how little this affects the rest of the plot, it's an odd detail for the writer to keep referencing, as characters keep asking, "so, did that deed ever turn up?" No, it didn't? Then I'd advise the screenwriter to either make something of it, or let the subject matter go! What's the point of bring it up over and over again if it ultimately has no consequence?

3. The question of Faison's handyman character, Gene Woodman: Will hires Gene to help renovate the house, and is confused by the fact that Gene insists on walking home through the woods at the end of every shift -- especially since, after taking only a couple of steps into the woods, Gene always immediately disappears from sight, as if by magic (or possibly just because the woods are deceptively thick).

4. The riddle of the little boy: Who is he? A ghost or a living kid? At one point, Will describes him to Gene, who tells Will that the kid is his stepson. But later, Gene asserts that he doesn't have a son or stepson, and insists that he never told Will otherwise.

5. The historical puzzle: Will discovers a mural in the basement that was apparently drawn by Governor John White and contains clues about what happened to the legendary Lost Colony of Roanoke Island. This subplot not only ties in to the haunting in a confusing way, but it also gives the writer an excuse to explore the Anna/Clive/Will dynamic, as Clive and one of his colleagues, Frank Kapla, are brought in as consultants after the discovery of the mural. Clive and Frank excitedly declare the mural to be the solution to "the greatest mystery in American history" although the movie never makes it clear exactly what that solution is. This subplot features a sub-subplot in which Clive, seeking academic glory, plans to steal Will's credit for discovering the mural. In an odd (but pleasantly effective) casting choice, Frank Kapla isn't played by an actor, but by famous anchorman Forrest Sawyer.

Any one of these subplots is interesting, but Cooper's attempt to juggle so many different storylines sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. The movie keeps dropping hints that all of these events are connected, which I have mixed feelings about, since the emotional result for the viewer is alternately intriguing and frustrating. I'm struggling with whether or not to reveal if all of this pays off in the end. I guess I shouldn't, because I don't want to spoil the movie for you if you plan on seeing it.

But that leaves me with a dilemma, because while I don't want to spoil anything, the ending simply must be addressed in some way, since some endings can make or break a movie, and in my opinion, the ending of For Sale by Owner is the worst aspect of the whole film. So since I don't want to give away any specifics, let me just say a few words about endings in general. Some endings, by their very nature, have a way of negating every aspect of the film that preceded it. The classic examples -- and I'm not saying that For Sale by Owner does or doesn't use any of these techniques, I'm just using a "for instance" -- are the old "it was all just a dream/hallucination/fictional story or lie told by an unreliable narrator" ploys.

Sometimes this works -- The Wizard of Oz comes to mind, and I'm sure you can think of your own favorite examples -- and sometimes it comes off as a cheap stunt and a cheat to the audience, robbing them of the emotional investment they'd put into the events of the film. The ending of For Sale by Owner falls squarely into the latter category, and this is where my advice of "take a couple of screenwriting courses" comes into play. Someone should have explained to Cooper that twist endings work only when they force you to reconsider, rather than dismiss, the dramatic significance of what has happened in the movie. For Sale by Owner, by contrast, has an ending that is clearly motivated not by any dramatic, narrative, or thematic element of the film, but rather by a writer who has discovered that he has painted himself into a corner with too many loose ends (I know, I'm mixing my metaphors) and then slapped on a half-assed "twist" ending that pretends to explain everything and ultimately explains nothing.