THE MISTRESS - Mark Reviews Movies

The Mistress, Blue Fox Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 27, 2023

The air of uncertainty and dread during the first act of The Mistress is fairly impressive for how simply it's established. We meet a newlywed couple, moving into their first home together. It's easy to understand why writer/director Greg Pritikin felt that such a seemingly mundane event could become the foundation of an uneasy thriller as soon as we get a good look at that house.

It's a beautiful mansion, really, that immediately communicates some long-standing and unclear history, while also making us wonder if the couple, the author of one "best-seller" non-fiction book and a costume designer, could actually afford it. Maybe the fact that they can do so points to some reason why such a place could be relatively affordable.

Anyway, there's a lot of touring and re-visiting the various rooms and spaces of this house, mainly on the part of Parker (John Magaro). He's the new husband and homeowner, who spends most of his days hanging around the house, as he waits for a meeting with the subject of his new book, and his nights doing the same thing, because he is certain someone is stalking him and wants to make sure that person hasn't found a way inside.

To say the camera loves this house is probably the best way to put it. The place is filled with long hallways, crooked staircases, stained glass windows, subtle openings and secret hidey-holes, and lighting that's sometimes a bit distracting, as if the previous owner, real estate agent, or Parker himself at some point cleaned out the stock of red light bulbs at the local home improvement shop. Who cares about over-the-top illumination that often makes it seem as if the air itself inside the house is bleeding when there's so much going on in the mansion, though?

The basement is a big, vacant space, and in a way that we never quite understand, it's accessible via a small passageway from a crawlspace outside. The confusing geography of where things and places are in relationship to others is kind of a benefit here, since Parker and his wife Madeline (Chasten Harmon) are still familiarizing themselves with the layout of the house and discovering its little—and more significant—secrets. Pritikin's unclear staging of all of this, especially when Parker finds the low-ceilinged attic and a slightly enclosed widow's walk above even that, puts us in the mindset of someone who has a general understanding of this house—enough to know that there are things yet to discover and spaces where someone could go unnoticed for a stretch of time.

That's enough about the house, because there's still an actual movie here beyond the repeated walking tours of everything and everywhere within it. In case the nearly singular focus of this review on the location itself isn't enough of an indication, the rest of this movie isn't of much particular interest.

The gist of it is that Parker quickly becomes convinced that a former sort-of flame, whose behavior became erratic and potentially dangerous after several dates, has tracked him down to the mansion. This is after her involuntary detention at a psychiatric facility and subsequent disappearance, so Parker becomes quite unsettled after seeing the same car parked, driving away as soon as he's visible, outside the house a couple times. He's especially unnerved when he catches sight of a woman on the back patio. He calls the cops, who aren't any help, and installs a series of security cameras.

As for the rest of the plot, it's mostly a string of sequences of Parker searching the mansion and having encounters with a mysterious woman (played by Aylya Marzolf), who might be the ex or could be the ghost of a woman whose love letters Parker finds. Madeline and the couple's friends becomes fascinated by the letters and the presumably tragic tale they communicate, but at a certain point, Parker becomes fairly relaxed about the possibility that he's a seeing ghost and even starts an affair with her, which is, apparently, not as physically impossible as that sounds.

It's kind of silly, to say the least, and intentionally confounding, especially as Parker's manner leaps from deep concern for his safety, to being so calm in the mysterious woman's presence, and, finally, to becoming an accomplice in a severe crime committed by the stranger/ghost. Nothing, obviously, is at it seems in The Mistress, because what it seems like is an utterly unconvincing premise for a thriller, but the third act's unceremonious dump of exposition (introducing two characters just to give us some back story) and twists is even less persuasive.

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