Girl on the Third Floor is a skin-crawling horror movie about hauntings and the supernatural perils of toxic masculinity

It’s hard finding new ways to haunt a house. And Girl on the Third Floor, a horror film that premiered at 2019’s SXSW Interactive Festival, doesn’t make a point of trying. It hits the classic beats of the genre, largely established by Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House: a protagonist with a troubled past moves into a grand but dilapidated old home with a dark secret, then finds a malevolent force dredging up his personal demons.

Instead of trying to push narrative limits, Girl on the Third Floor uses predictability to generate suspense. It draws the audience through each step of the protagonist’s inevitable downfall, delivering copious foreshadowing and jump scares with simple practical effects. Marbles, mucus, and doorbells have never been so ominous.

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