Movie Review: The Selling (2011)

The movie stars Gabriel Diani, Janet Varney, Jonathan Klein, Etta Devine, Nancy Lenehan and Barry Bostwick.

I came across this film on one of our movie channels a couple nights ago and, while I had never heard of the movie before, it did sound interesting enough to justify recording it, even though I doubted I would end up liking it. As it turned out though, it ended up being an entertaining film.

Ghost movies and comedy don’t always work well together but, in this particular case, the film was actually pretty funny. A big part of the reason for this was the writers deciding not to make the ghosts themselves funny (they were actually a little scary) and, instead, focusing on the various reactions from Richard (Diani), Dave (Klein) and the people they were trying to sell the house to.

I think the funniest scene in this movie had to be the one with Father Jimmy (Bostwick) trying to perform the exorcism and failing miserably.  I won’t go into too much detail because I don’t want to give out the spoilers, but when you have a priest running for his life, you know you’re in trouble.

Another thing I found I liked about this movie was the fact there was a bit of mystery surrounding the restless spirits. At least from everything they knew about the house, no actual murder had ever taken place there and the killer himself also died elsewhere. In fact, the only real connection the house had to the killer is he lived there for a short period of time. Yet, it was still haunted for reasons Barry, with the help of a waitress/ghost expert (Devine) had to figure out, especially when one of the ghosts starts putting Richard and his friends in danger. That part of the movie did keep the film from becoming predictable.

In fact, my only real complaint about the movie had to be the ending. It was a bit drawn out and, at times, a little confusing. I would have loved to see the filmmakers take a different approach with that or, at very least, shorten it a bit.

I had doubts about this film but, as I said, it turned out to be funnier than expected and, because of that, is a movie I would recommend watching if you’re looking for something different.

My Grade: B