credit: The Girl on the Third Floor
It hasn’t been uncommon to see a former athlete or pro wrestler in a movie or TV show for a while now, and Girl on the Third Floor is no exception since most people who have watched WWE should recognize Phil Brooks, aka CM Punk, despite the fact that he looks like a well-groomed individual that’s attempting to renovate a home for himself and his pregnant wife. There are a few logical issues with this movie, to be certain, but in the spirit of turning off one’s logical side just to get through a movie, there are a lot of things that a person might just let go of when trying to watch this story. Namely, the strange, milky substance coming from the outlets, the black gunk in the walls, and a few other key points that might serve more as gross-outs than real elements of horror. Seriously, if the walls of your new home are leaking anything other than dirty water, it might be time to tear it down and just start over. But keeping with the stupid horror tropes, it’s not too hard to think that some folks would get into this and simply enjoy it without tearing the story apart minute by minute.
credit: The Girl on the Third Floor
Phil isn’t any better at acting than he was in the MMA ring, which is kind of peculiar.
What’s peculiar is that during his stint in the WWE, CM Punk was actually rather good on the mic, but then again, acting and playing to the crowd are different enough that a person can be great at one and horrible at the other. In all fairness, Phil doesn’t perform that poorly in this movie. It’s simply that he’s not a born actor, and, well, he feels a bit stiff and even wooden in his delivery at times. In some ways, it almost feels as though he’s trying to take control of the story, even while he’s failing in a seriously spectacular manner. While he’s just convincing enough to keep things going, it almost feels as though this should have been an adult movie with a horror theme, especially since two of the three women in the movie are rather attractive.
The story is a bit basic, but somehow it stretches long enough to become a movie.
Ghost stories have been told in so many different ways that it’s tough to come up with another idea that might work with the audience, given there’s usually going to be a lot of overlap between one story and another, enough that some might even feel that there’s a connection that can be made between one movie and another. But the horrid appearance of black gunk that seeps from the walls, the strange, suspect fluid that comes from outlets, and the fact that a young woman starts showing up when someone is working on the house are the lead-ins to the house’s supposedly horrid backstory. Having been in a brothel at one time isn’t too bad, but the fact that a young woman was killed and stuffed in the wall could create a troubling reputation that many people in a small town might keep hold of for a while. The fact is that it’s mentioned that the house has been inhabited before the current owner, but no one has ever stuck around. That alone is bound to be a big red flag, but remember what I said about logic. It doesn’t belong here, at least not if you want to enjoy the movie.
credit: The Girl on the Third Floor
It’s kind of easy to get lost in this movie.
Unfortunately, I don’t mean that you can simply lose yourself and track of time since the manner in which the house’s backstory is told feels a bit confusing, not to mention scattered. It’s almost as though the director felt that coming back to the origin of the ghost now and then would give the audience a sense that, yes, she’s a tragic spirit, and yes, she’s a vengeful spirit, but giving people a piece at a time is going to convey that and leave them wondering who they need to feel sorry for by the end of the movie.
The ending feels a bit cheesy, but it works.
It’s been seen in quite a few horror movies that houses can be conduits, or spiritual traps, for spirits, and it makes sense that once the physical body of the girl that had been in the house for so long was taken out that she would be released. But of course, adding another body would no doubt mean adding another spirit, since at the end of the movie, it’s shown that Don, aka Phil, has become the current spirit that inhabits the house. It’s a little cheesy, but oh well.
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