Tuesday, June 4, 2013

81 - The Perfect Host

    A bank robber weasels his way into hiding in a man's house, as he expects guests coming to his dinner party.  After the deception is up, the robber finds that his host is not entirely sane.
    Stars David Hyde Pierce, who is the absolute perfect person for the role.  He gets to play an incredible part that is simultaneously an extension of his persona from Frasier, and a dark parody of it.
    There will probably be spoilers in this, since I don't seem to be able to talk about the meat of the picture without it.
    We don't quite understand exactly what the deal is with Pierce's character.  He's clearly crazy, but he seems to be strongly in control of himself.  He imagines plenty of party guests, but their relationship to him - and to reality - is uncertain.  I immediately thought that his imaginary guests were prior victims that he had killed.  Then at another point, I thought that maybe all the guests were figments of his imagination, and that they were just present whenever he was going to murder a single real person.
    None of these ideas are confirmed or denied by the events of the movie.

    What makes the movie interesting is how far beyond the premise the story goes.  Once the situation has been set up, it's easy to assume that the story will culminate in a fight between the two of them, at which point one of them will be killed.  But that never happens.  Once we think that their situation has been resolved, we find that there was another layer that we didn't understand.  Then we learn what Pierce's character is like outside of this situation.  Then we learn that things with the guest weren't what was expected.
    The movie ends on an ambiguous note.  We know approximately how that situation will play out, but we have no idea how it will resolve.
    I wish I could be more specific, but… it's just too complicated.
    This is a movie that could never be a hit, but it's smart.  It's smart enough that it will have an audience that will be pleasantly surprised by how interesting it is.

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