Sunday, January 27, 2013

The Perfect Host (2010)


The Perfect Host was programmed at Fantasia a few years back, but I didn’t buy a ticket for fear that the film would be too broad for my tastes. Even after picking up a DVD copy in some random bargain bin, I was still convinced that it would prove to be a generic, albeit well-written thriller set in camera, sort of a character study focused on the limited interactions between a psychotic host and his guests. In reality, the film proved to be even broader than I first thought, crossing over at will between psycho thriller and serious crime drama in a confused bid to create artificial depth for itself, and to forcedly lengthen the runtime. The whole thing isn’t even set in camera. That would’ve been way too hard to sustain. The narrative rather spills all over the place, helplessly trying to seep into every crevasse of our resolve, leaving TV actor David Hyde Pierce squarely in charge of piloting a vehicle headed for nowhere in particular.

The premise here is quite familiar, but given some fake, unneeded depth thanks to the aforementioned mix-up of film genres. At first, we are acquainted with John, a petty criminal on the run from the LAPD after a bank robbery. When his license plate number is mentioned on the radio, the man suddenly starts feeling unsafe about driving around, and decides to find a place to hide instead. That’s how he ends up on Warwick’s posh porch. By pretending that they share a mutual friend, the bank robber even manages to get inside Warwick’s luxurious house, eavesdropping on the preparation of a very special dinner party. At first, the courteous host seems candid enough, lapping up every one of John’s incongruous answers to his incessant questions. At some point, however, his guest is backed into a corner as he starts running out of lies. That is when his incompetence finds refuge in violence.

John is just a run-of-the-mill thief, or is he?
You probably won't care about the answer...

Picking up a butcher’s knife, John takes Warwick hostage, unaware that he has been sipping dope-laced wine for a while now.  You see, Warwick is a very resourceful psycho, and he’s been ready for John even before he ended up on his doorstep, having prepared a special bottle for the occasion. Momentarily waking up from his forced slumber, John then finds himself tied to a chair around the dinner table where his host is entertaining a bevy of imaginary socialites. And from this pivotal role reversal, the plot starts to unfold...  and crumble. The victim has now become the victimizer, and our sympathy for the home invader starts being increasingly solicited through a series of flashbacks exposing John’s troubled past as well as the sentimental details of his unlawful scheme. This opens up the way for a dreary second half in which the interplay between the hunter and its prey spills into the shockingly familiar realm of police thrillers as John is let loose by his captor only to be chased through the ugly streets of L.A.

How can I convey the appreciation one should derive from this vaguely intriguing little thriller? I guess that it depends on one’s appreciation of David Hyde Pierce (an actor mostly famous for his long-lasting role as Dr. Niles Crane on Frasier). After all, the man is directly in charge of propelling the narrative here, with baby-faced Clayne Crawford being a mere cog in Warwick’s schemes. As for the supporting cast, it is not even given the opportunity to shine, being instead relegated to a bunch of bit parts. In fact, all of the peripheral characters that they portray are almost detrimental to the plot, as they gluttonously devour screen time without adding much to the narrative but some unnecessary twists.

To be honest, everything around Warwick seems like mere artifice, except for his luxurious living/dining room, whose depth proves surprisingly useful, even crucial to the mise-en-scène by allowing the director to alternatively conceal and reveal the characters’ position in space. The rich locale thus becomes a theatrical space tailor-made to befit the needs of an in-camera thriller. Once John is tied-up and at the mercy of Warwick, all suspense becomes insured by the two characters’ lines of sight and relative position to one another. This is emphasized by the fact that the host often loses track of his guest, allowing him to wiggle out of his restraints, or to equip a crucial prop. That is how suspense is maintained, by locating the action in a finite space and making the relationship between captor and captive the center of attention. Further digressions are only harmful to the integrity of the thriller.

Warwick's dining room is a perfect space
for a thriller to unfold.

Being the cornerstone of tension-building that it is, it’s a shame that the living room set is eventually shelved in order to pursue the secondary narrative thread elaborated in the first half of the film, the one concerning John’s sad money-making scheme and his running from the law. I lost almost all interest in the film immediately after the narrative shift that brought the action away from the psycho’s abode and into the ugly streets of L.A. for it meant that all suspense had suddenly evaporated in favor of pursuing an awkwardly dramatic story of abused trust and blind dedication. To me, the very raison-d’être of the film had suddenly vanished, and its edge suddenly become dull as the narrative started to thread more and more familiar waters. If the surprisingly dull twist ending is any indication, the narrative should’ve ended far earlier than it did…

Contrarily to most thrillers, or horror films for that matter, The Perfect Host is very intriguing during the initial exposition of the characters, but far less so once we get acquainted with them. Despite some strong performances by the two leads, who portray their characters to the best of their abilities, one can hardly overlook the poor conception of these characters. Hence, it is the first half-hour of the film that provides the most thrills. The mystery is still whole and impenetrable at that point and the interplay between Pierce and Crawford is at the height of its complexity. With both men playing nice guy by throwing fake smiles and good manners around, with Warwick’s initial candor appearing almost childlike and John’s violent nature being only slightly veiled by his awkward farce, the perspective of an explosive confrontation between them, which would reveal their true character, becomes increasingly unnerving. It is only when the masks have fallen that the shortcomings of the screenplay are revealed along with the director’s inability to maintain suspense throughout.

The initial encounter between John and Warwick
is the highlight of the film.

The first narrative feature that sticks out like a sore thumb is just how overdetermined Warwick’s psychosis actually is. Seeing how convinced he is that imaginary people are interacting with him, it takes a real stretch of the imagination to figure out how he can be so composed in society and able to maintain a high-ranking position in his work place. Most importantly, that psychosis feeds a certain compulsion he has to constantly digress from his dialogue with John in order to “entertain” other guests floating around his living room. This completely dispels the illusion of control necessary to make his victim’s plight seem inescapable and to subsequently heighten the sense of tension one might derive from that plight. In the case of John, we are also asked to make some arduous perceptual contortions in order to accept a tear-inducing background that comes in stark contrast with his initial brutality and lack of refinement. Luckily, the plot doesn’t unfold in a purely linear fashion. But while this helps complexify the plot, it often breaks some hard-earned sense of tension by generating cuts away from the living room and into random locales with various degrees of relevance. In turn, this creates a hodge-podge of important dramatic issues that will need to be addressed in an all-encompassing finale that diminishes the impact of every one of those important dramatic issues.

In the end, The Perfect Host is a misguided attempt at creating a singular thriller by mashing up ill-defined genre boundaries and spiking a would-be realistic crime drama with some eccentric humor. Unfortunately, David Hyde Pierce is the only actor in the cast that seems able to handle the subtler aspects of the screenplay by delivering some outrageous lines of dialogue with just the right amount of self-consciousness. In contrast, the two actors portraying his police buddies are absolutely incapable of delivering a satiric twist on their own, straight-faced lines. But while the film is far from perfect, it still manages to deliver some tasty dialogue (delivered by Pierce with all the suaveness of a seasoned vet) and some very cost-effective production values (the film’s total budget being estimated at around 1,000,000$). For those two reasons, it might yet be considered like a mild success.

2½/5    David Hyde Pierce’s enthusiastic performance as the titular character helps keep this flawed, but earnest indie effort afloat.