The Perfect Host, on first glance, appears to be one of the sort of movies I enjoy -- a psychological thriller matching two dangerous characters who are well matched antagonists engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse. Unfortunately, the movie falls apart in part because the screenwriter needed to go through a few rounds of revisions in order to sift out the extraneous ideas and fine tune the story.
*** Beyond this point there be spoilers. Arrr!!! *** The setup was pretty good. It established pretty quickly that John is on the run from a crime gone bad and is desperate to find a place to hideout. That's all well and good.
Then, there's the scene in the market, where John is attempting to to get some supplied to deal with his wounded foot. Suddenly, a robber comes in and tries to rob the place. John disarms the robber and she runs off, and then the store owner chases John off with the robber's gun.
There's nothing wrong with this scene, in and of itself. It's just that there's no reason for it to be there. It doesn't add anything to the movie.
So, ultimately, John manages to con his way into Warwick's house. Now, we get to the central conflict of the movie, where the tables are turned and John, who starts off as being this bad ass career criminal, becomes the victim of Warwick, who initially comes across as a nice but fairly inconsequential sort of fellow but who proves to be even more dangerous than John. As the story progresses, we get a view deeper and deeper into Warwick's psychosis. He's not just a bit off, he is literally delusional, and extremely dangerous.
I can let some degree of coincidence go in a movie. Willing suspension of disbelief requires that to a degree. So, I'm willing to overlook the coincidence of a criminal looking for a place to hide just happening to run into a delusional serial killer.
Weirdness continues. And I really enjoyed this. David Hyde Pierce was great as Warwick. Clayne Crawford did as good of a job with John as one can expect considering what he had to work with. Then, things just sort of dribble into incoherence.
Take, for example, the chess scene. John challenges Warwick to a game of chess. If John wins, Warwick agrees to let him go. If Warwick wins -- I'm still a bit fuzzy about what Warwick would get if he won. Suddenly, though flashbacks to John with his girlfriend, Simone, we learn that John not only knows how to play chess, he seems to be something of a chess master, and manages -- much to Warwick's surprise -- beat him handily. Being a lunatic of his word, Warwick lets John go.
Now, does John take the opportunity to go? No. No, he does not. He grabs a knife from a display on Warwick's wall and stabs the man. Only, he doesn't really stab him -- because the knife is a movie prop with a retractable blade. The house is full of knives -- we see any number of actual knives from when Warwick was preparing dinner earlier -- and John just happens to assault his opponent with a knife that just happens to be a movie prop? Surprised by this turn of events, John is overpowered by Warwick and tied up again. So the chess scene MEANT ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. You could cut it out of the movie completely and no one would ever know it was supposed to be there. It changed nothing in the story and, except for one brief mention, is never referred to again in the movie.
So, skipping ahead, we see what appears to be John's body out in the trash, with what appears to be a gash across his throat. Only, no, it's not -- John isn't dead. It's all movie makeup, implying that Warwick hadn't killed anyone.
Now, think about this for a moment. You have just held captive and tortured a man who has already demonstrated that he is willing to kill you. And you let him go. You let him go right outside of your own house. Please. Take a moment to consider whether you think Warwick was that delusional.
Skipping ahead again, we soon learn that Warwick is, in fact, a police detective -- and is in fact the detective in charge of the investigation into the crime John committed the day before.
I don't know about you, but I'm far beyond my ability to suspend disbelief at this point. This is simply too much of a coincidence to be acceptable.
Next, we learn that John was committing the crime because he thought his girlfriend was sick, when in fact she was just playing him to get him to rob the bank and she could screw him over.
What? Then, there is the interminable scene at the end where a detective working for Warwick receives a Polaroid in the mail showing Warwick and John together, something Warwick took at his house. I'm sure this scene is supposed to be trying to set up some sort of suspense about the detective discovering Warwick's secret, or maybe Warwick doing the same thing with his detective he did with John. I'll just say that it doesn't work. Not a bit.
Even with all of these criticisms, there were a lot of things to like about this movie. Unfortunately, there appear to be ideas for about three or four different movies in this one screenplay, and none of them really work well together.
Writer-director Nick Tomnay was in desperate need of rewriting this script and determining which story he wanted to tell. As it is, The Perfect Host is simply a perfect mess.
L.
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