The Maid's Room

source: The Maid's Room

This movie is not agonizing in the way the bigger part of modern USA horror is agonizing: there are no priest vs. demons vs. supernatural feels vs. very sweet children in a middle-class context. This immediately lifts this movie out of the realm of mediocrity, and sets it apart from all the Insidious-like crap that's floating around the JW player jungle. A good thing was the moral ambiguity in the son's character, as well as the lead actress'"maid". However, it's not really a scary movie for anybody older than 12. This shouldn't even be considered a horror film, imho. I liked the story, but found the execution somewhat flawed in that the main characters (other than the maid + son) could never really convince in their authenticity. Also, the sound-design/music is typical meh & Hollywood-esque (no creative montage, no purist electronic usage, sub-par interaction of visuals and audio etc). The tempo is kinda slow, but not too slow; the story is not very original, but original enough. All in all a so-so one-time watch, but nothing more.

The beginning is so slow and boring that I thought about turning it off. (I should have.) the acting was bad -all the acting -there wasn't at least one actor that could carry this big waste of time. Many of the "stunts" were so fake that they reminded me of watching a 1970s TV series. When the father strangles the maid to death it doesn't even look like he is putting any pressure on her neck. And later when this overweight CEO-type that hasn't seen a gym in 30 years takes on three very muscular young men he easily beats-up one of them while the other two onlookers appear frightened. So NOT what would have happened in real life. The character development for the college-age son was so inconsistent. One minute her is a complete self-absorbed, demeaning, drunken peeping-tom and the next minute he grows half of a conscience. Despite all of this I hung in to the very end only to discover that the movie keeps you completely hanging on a number of very important plot lines. Basically the movie drops you like a hot-potato which is exactly what you should do to this movie.

Drina (Paula Garcés) an undocumented worker form Columbia lands a job as a maid at the summer home of an upscale family. The son, Brandon (Philip Ettinger) is a typical male interested in girls, parties, and "Hustler" magazine. Drina is a little too nosy for her own good. One night while underage Brandon was out drinking he hit a deer...which turned out not to be a deer. Mr. Crawford (Bill Camp) attempts to buy Drina's silence and then things escalate to the expected inane ending. The film has that faux drama-thriller feel as a made of TV film. The sound track was lame and the script was weak giving the actors no chance at a good performance. Parental Guide: F-bomb. No sex or nudity.

I had to write a review because I think this film is very underrated. The stars carry the tension well and it's got a Macbeth feel to it that I found fascinating. I enjoyed the filming, ambiance lighting and low key acting and the Genius of using very constant skin crawling ants To heighten the unease! Good film!

This movie was horrible. The storyline sounded good but the movie itself was boring!

The premise of this movie is involving and starts out well. A Columbian maid moves in with a rich American family to clean and hopefully fulfill her dream of attending university. We're introduced to the families son Brandon, 16, who in many ways is a typical teenager, he experiments with alcohol and is curious about the attractive maid. This all changes one night when he goes out drinking and kills a man in a hit and run. The maid, who is incredibly nosy even before this, deduces that foul play is at hand and finds a clipping of a hit and run in a newspaper not so cleverly hidden in the boy's room. Why wouldn't they destroy this? She overhears the conversation between father and son and is then told her services are no longer required. However a bribe is offered for her to stay silent. Her conscience does not allow this and enrages the parents. This starts off a chain reaction where the parents both try to convince her to do the "right" thing and take the money and forget about it and since she's an illegal immigrant no one would believe her anyway. It all culminates in her being killed. She does herself no favours however. One would think coming from somewhere like Columbia she would have some street smarts but she lets her fear get in the way of escaping. I'm sure one of the biggest complaints about this film will be the hit and run scene. As is constant throughout the movie, it flickers back and forwards to previous events which actually just leaves the viewer confused and wondering why they didn't make it more coherent by piecing it together as it played out. The hit and run scene shows that Brandon has called an ambulance and the man he killed taken to hospital. The ambulance officers console Brandon and don't call the police. Considering the next day his parents accuse him of "smelling like a brewery", it's odd that the ambulance officers didn't notice this and also how sober Brandon seems. This glaring faux pas basically destroyed the movies credibility for me. The movie is well shot and the actors capable enough, although I found the mother to be quite wooden, but it is disjointed and sort of ambles along until it ends abruptly with the son being accidentally shot by the father. Both parents seem to show no emotion at this. All together, the film could have been great. But some glaring omissions and a confused patching together of scenes leave more questions than answers.

There is NOTHING good about this film. You keep watching it hoping it will redeem itself. Then it finally ends with that never happening. The way they view immigrants is so incredibly childlike. They made all the immigrants act like they had an IQ of 70. Then they have this 60 year old white dude running after a 100% healthy and very fit woman and he actually catches up to her? She literally runs around as if she is too stupid to figure out what she's supposed to do when a grandpa is chasing her. Not only does he catch up to her, they make it seem he's capable of overpowering her and strangling her. As she just barely even fights. Just kind of looks up at him and says "sorry, the director not only thinks immigrants are stupid but lazy too so I'm incapable of fighting back". Oh! Grandpa also singlehandedly took on 3 young laborers. And they explained it away that it's because he's wealthy. Mmmmkkkkkkkaaaaaaayyyyyyyy I'm so disappointed that annabella agreed to do this movie. What's wrong with you girl?

She was stupid for not taking the money when he said $50,000. Anyone from Columbia of her class would've taken that money and ran. The family could've just paid a down on their luck illegal to off her for cheap. She's a real moron.

I was pretty sure what was going to happen, but I didn't expect the characters to act so asinine. There is no way the maid could of been that naive. Waste of time!