Good surprise for some journalists at the Cannes Film Market 2019, Hous3 is playing the originality card first and foremost.
A reunion weekend of old students friends will be disturbed when one of them confess that he successfuly decrypt a confidential file every hacker of the world try to decrypt.
A house (living room and dining room), 9 actors speaking especially about computer science : onto the paper, Hous3 project is barely exciting, except for computer fans.
This is all the more a surprise.
For his first movie, Manolo Mungia offsets his low budget by a lot of ideas, a flawless direction of the cast (each actor plays very well, helped by punchy dialogues) and a rhythm never grow less.
Let it be a simple conversation to guess passwords or when the characters type on keyboards to decrypt code, the movie is never boring. The staging permits at each footage to capture the views of its nine characters while maintening the suspense (strenghtened by excellent musical choices).
Like other excellent movies like The Invitation (Karyn Kusama, 2015) or The Circle (Aaron Hann & Mario Miscone, 2015), Hous3 is a closed-room fully mastered (very good spatial management), also into its end fairly surprising (maybe a little too abrut for some people).
Hous3 deserves to be discovered urgnetly and Manolo Mungia takes place into the list of horror/fantasy movies directors to pay attention to.