PLOT: A woman is trapped in the home of a stalker who wants to watch old movies, play old games, sing old songs, and cause her physical harm.
REVIEW: Precious Chong followed her father Tommy Chong into a comedy career, and in director Zach Gayne's indie thriller HOMEWRECKER she shows that she can be quite funny, while also proving that she can effectively play a character who is dangerously unbalanced. Chong's character Linda is fixated on a woman named Michelle (Alex Essoe of STARRY EYES); it's no coincidence that they go to the same exercise classes and same coffee shop. Linda inserts herself into Michelle's life by presenting herself as being a friendly, although odd and disruptively talkative, person who needs a friend. But soon after their first conversation, Linda has made Michelle a captive within her home.
Chong and Essoe wrote the screenplay for HOMEWRECKER with Gayne, and it's really cool that they got to write their own characters, because this movie is a two-woman show for the majority of its running time. Other characters pop in here and there, but most of the scenes are carried entirely by the two stars/co-writers, and once Linda and Michelle enter Linda's house the movie doesn't leave the property. "Two people in one location" is about as budget friendly as a concept can get, and Gayne clearly didn't have a lot of money to work with here – viewers aren't likely to be blown away by the look of this film, even with some fun use of split screen. But this isn't a movie that needed flashy visuals, this is all about watching the two leads turn in great performances.
Chong's performance is the real attention grabber. She is entirely believable as a character who is completely insane. Linda is mentally stuck in the time period of her glory days; while holding Michelle captive she watches an '80s movie, plays a decades-old board game meant for teens, and has a memorable scene in which she listens to the 1994 Lisa Loeb hit "Stay". She's so lost that you almost feel sorry for her, but you can't when she's locking someone up and threatening them with a sledgehammer. Chong is so impressive and fun as Linda, I'm hoping to see her in a lot of comedies in the future.
Essoe was tasked with playing the more down-to-earth character. She starts off as someone so overly accommodating and afraid to rock the boat that she gets herself into serious trouble with Linda. During her time in Linda's house, we sympathize with Michelle as her world is torn apart through physical and psychological attacks. She doesn't have a showy role like Chong, but the film wouldn't work if Essoe wasn't able to ground things and make us root for her character as she tries to figure out a way to escape from Linda's place.
It can be tough to draw out the set-up of two people interacting in one location for over an hour and hold the audience's attention while doing so. HOMEWRECKER is quite short (just 76 minutes), but it wasn't packed with filler to reach feature length, it feels like it's exactly as long as it needed to be. Maybe the "Stay" sequence could have been cut, if necessary, but there's no way I would want to give that up.
Gayne and the stars were able to make this story lively, interesting, and quirky enough that the 76 minutes fly by. Along the way, we also gradually learn that there's a surprising depth to the story. Captivating and amusing, with some shocking explosions of violence, HOMEWRECKER is well worth checking out.
The film is set to reach select drive-in theatres on July 3rd, with a Digital and DVD release to follow on July 7th.