House Hunting 2006

From the quiet lure of a foreclosed dream on 70 private acres, two families cross paths in a house that seems too perfect to be real. The Hayses—Charlie Hays, his daughter Emmy, and his second wife Susan—see this as a fresh start and a chance for Emmy and Susan to bridge their mutual dislike. They are joined by the Thomsons—Don Thomson, his wife Leslie, and their live-in son Jason, who moves with a careful, strained pace after a car accident left him with a broken leg. The house’s beauty is also its trap, and the two families soon learn they are not the only occupants of this place.

Inside, the mood shifts from curiosity to unease as a distraught girl named Hanna materializes on the road, mute and traumatized, just as the families prepare to take her to the hospital. A strange loop begins: they reach the road to fetch the realtor’s number, return, and find the house again and again as if time itself refuses to move forward. After Don persists in chasing a resolution, his car runs dry, and the night seals them inside the house. The door closes not just on space, but on possibility, and the group discovers the home has begun to sustain itself with eerie precision—seven cans for seven people—fueling the sense that the house has a mind of its own.

As days blur into a feverish month, the dynamics fracture under pressure. Susan and Leslie, once civil, clash over happiness, while Emmy begins to see a man who killed his own son, and Charlie and Emmy are visited by visions of Emmy’s mother, a figure whose throat is ominously slashed. The house seems to know the deepest secrets of each family, and Charlie finally admits to Emmy that her mother left them long ago, though Susan hints that there is more she knows. Clues from the mute Hanna and a puzzling jigsaw piece pull Emmy toward a desperate path back to the road, a plan that is interrupted when Jason lunges at her in a brutal moment.

Hanna’s intervention with a log turns violent, and Don, increasingly paranoid, tries to free them all from the house but Jason’s wounds and faint hope punctuate the crisis. Jason eventually confesses a haunting truth: he struck a jogging woman with his car, not a deer—she was a resident of the house, a revelation that fractures the remaining trust. Don makes a perilous choice to depart, yet when he returns, Susan, fearing his intent, strikes him down with an axe. The house’s hunger grows louder: the food stops arriving, and Charlie’s grip on reality unravels as the ghostly presence of the woman Jason killed closes in, choking him.

In a flare of jealousy and fear, Charlie snaps. He kills Susan, believing she told Emmy of his past misdeeds—when in truth, Emmy has heard only half-truths and whispers from a mother who may not be what she seems. Emmy and Hanna flee again, driven by the belief that leaving means escape, but their path is a grim echo of the past: the house demands a sacrifice, and Charlie pursues, intents sharpened by grief and rage. He murders Hanna, and Emmy, acting with a fierce mix of sorrow and resolve, shoots him.

Finally, Emmy and Hanna stumble toward the road, where another family awaits hope of safety. Yet the house’s loop proves unbreakable: as ghosts distract the living from the act of departure, the house’s caretaker—described as a Realtor with a pair of scissors—slips in and severs Emmy’s tongue, sealing the cycle once more. The road becomes a distant, cruel joke, and the two families reassess the lure of the house while the haunting continues unabated, waiting for the next chance to begin again.

• Akiko Yano and Tamori provide the haunting voices that thread through the film’s atmosphere, anchoring the otherworldly mood with their distinctive tones.