It tries.  It really does. Still, The Girl on the Third Floor is just not that good.  It got quite a few accolades, but I was waiting for something extraordinary.  It seemed to fall down on two counts—the writing isn’t very good and we’re allowed to build very little sympathy for the protagonist.  If you can’t feel for somebody and the dialogue does only light lifting, what’ve you got to go on?  Some critics suggest that if you know the star (Phil Brooks) and his persona you’ll appreciate it more.  That must be a problem for many movies where baked-in personalities are counted on—early Disney used to do this to make cartoons attractive to adults.  If you don’t know them the appeal evaporates.  In any case, a couple buys a house. He (Don) goes to renovate it while she (Liz) works to support them.  The house used to be a brothel and Don has no problem cheating on his wife when a hot ghost shows up.

The reason I watched the movie was the connection between horror and religion.  The first person to check in on Don is Ellie Mueller, the pastor of the church across the street.  She’s simply identified as “Protestant” and she drinks bourbon and swears, so it’s fair to guess she’s not Baptist.  In any case, she warns him about the house but ever confident, Don carries on.  Later, as all the ghosts come out and Liz shows up unexpectedly, Ellie shows up again.  This time she advises Liz to leave but she frames the evil of the house as a matter of choices.  Don (who succumbed to the ghosts) consistently made bad choices in order to get what he wants.  Liz and Ellie, however, think of others.  In that sense there’s a parable here.

The haunted house tropes have mostly been seen before.  Some manage to be a bit freaky, but many of them don’t really shock.  Or maybe I’ve seen too many movies for them to have an impact.  The heavy metal soundtrack is a bit—ahem—heavy-handed.  Using marbles as weapons is a little unexpected and angry ghosts often make for effective monsters.  Still, these seem to succumb to a sledge hammer pretty easily.  One of them keeps coming back, however, and one is more a monster than a ghost.  In any case, there was real effort here.  For my taste, however, good writing can cover a multitude of sins.  And it really helps if you sympathize with the main protagonist, even if just a smidgen.