Imagine, if you will, the perfect home. Clean, airy, pre-furnished, plenty of land, and all waiting for the right person to move in. Even the price tag is incredible, considering the current market. Obviously, there’s something seriously wrong here.

For Sale follows a comically sleazy salesman named Mason McGuiness (Andrew Roth). He loses his job selling used cars after his shady practices get too blatant to hide, then gets kicked out by his wife (Rachael Lubarsky), who is more than a little peeved that he lost his job and forgot their anniversary on the same day. He mopes around, sleeping in his car and getting hung up on by former friends, until he manages to land an interview at a real estate company, where quirky owner Mr. Bendt (Steve Montague) makes him a deal: if he can sell an unsellable house, Mason will become a partner at the company.

Excited by the seemingly easy job and the prospect of an unoccupied house to squat in, Mason takes the deal quickly. He isn’t in the house long, however, before he discovers why it just won’t sell. Has the conman finally met his match?

For Sale is a horror comedy in a similar vein as 2011’s The Selling, wherein a man must sell a house with more ghosts than it knows what to do with – or he may die trying. For Sale, however, doesn’t balance its comedy well. It starts off decently funny, ascends to near-Scary Movie levels of dumb fun, then gets far too serious. Some movies can pull off tonal shifts like this. For Sale did not. The emotional gravity of the last act felt unearned, for reasons I can’t really put my finger on other than the utter goofiness of the rest of the movie. Moments that were probably supposed to invoke genuine emotion from the audience hit me with a resounding “huh, that was darker than I was expecting.”

The effects are also just really, really awful. All the ghost costumes/makeup looked like they were borrowed from a haunt during the off-season. The fake blood doesn’t even look real if you’re colorblind – as confirmed by a colorblind friend of mine. And there’s some really bad CGI used where practical effects probably would’ve been easier anyway. This, in and of itself, isn’t enough to render the movie unwatchable, but it’s often just bad to look at. Had the comedy been more comedic, it probably would’ve been fine, but the goofs weren’t goofy enough for the film to pull off looking the way it does.

All that said, For Sale was also really entertaining at times! The breakout performance was definitely Corinne Britti as Claire, a grouchy, sugar-addicted medium who Mason recruits via Craigslist. Every scene she’s in is delightful, the film would not have been the same without her.

Alas, one performance is not enough to save a middle-of-the-road movie from being, well, middle-of-the-road. For Sale isn’t terrible, but watching it would probably be better as a drinking game of some sort. A few friends, a few beverages, and For Sale would probably be a good time! It’s halfway decent. But halfway decent isn’t enough to be a good experience on its own.

4 out of 10