I just came across this wonderful new feature, "The House," directed by Desiree Lim. It's an atmospheric ghost story about
Jean Kaneko (Natalie Skye), swept away by the tsunami of the catastrophic financial meltdown – just quit her coveted job as an investment banker on Wall Street. After a soul-searching journey traveling around the world, she returns home to Vancouver, still floating in limbo. Instead of settling down, she camps out in an empty home owned by a friend's rich family who never lived there. A house waiting to be sold when the price is right. Jean moves in – vows to finish her travelogue about her journey. She thinks she's finally found the perfect quiet time – away from any kind of commitment, no phone calls, no job, no friends – she's her own boss. So she should have no problem focusing on her writing at long last. Or at least that's what she thinks. To her surprise, she's actually not the only occupant in the house. She finds out that if she wanted to stay, she'd have to share the place with some former occupants who've turned into bad squatters. A cynical college professor (Alex Zahara), his bitter sister (Emilie Ullerup) married to a devoted husband (David Richmond-Peck), a disgruntled cab driver (Zahf Paroo) and a washed-up drifter (Zak Santiago) — all of whom are not even supposed to be there, because they're actually dead. As Jean reluctantly confronts these souls as tormented as herself, they inevitably end up in an entangled mass of secrets and lies…
The film is , apparently, primarily set in one location… the house. Hence, "The House." Lim did this nice interview with Asians on Film about her movie. She said:
“The House” is a psychological drama about a former Wall Street banker returning home after quitting her coveted career in New York and is at a crossroads in her life. She retreats to an empty vacation home to write a travelogue but gets caught in an entangled mass of secrets and lies of the ghosts that haunt the house. “The House” is not a conventional ghost story but a character-driven ensemble film about lost souls, both alive and dead, psychologically and spiritually trapped in a confined space but separated by self-imposed isolation – all of them needing to find a way out.
The main character in the film was inspired by an actual former Wall Street banker turned journalist Nomi Prins – whom I got to know through a TV show I was working on when I invited her as a guest on the show. For a while, I’ve had this seed concept for a story about a woman trapped in a house with some ghosts and they start having meaningful relationships with each other despite their separate realities, and I sort of combined this concept and the story inspired by Nomi’s experience – who chose to walk away from Wall Street because of the corporate corruption, political collusion and deception in that world.
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