The Perfect Host Works as a Hilarious Dark Comedy
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The Perfect Host is funny and bizarre, but tries to be a thriller as well as dark comedy. Can it walk that tightrope and succeed at both?
Written by James “Crypticpsych” Lasome
June 15, 2011
Movie Trailer
Image Gallery
Release: January 2010 (Sundance), May 27, 2011 (VOD), July 1, 2011 (Limited US)
Written and Directed by: Nick Tomnay
Starring:
David Hyde Pierce as Warwick Wilson
Clayne Crawford as John Taylor
Nathaniel Parker as Det. Morgan
Helen Reddy as Cathy Knight
Megahn Perry as Simone Demarchi
Warwick Wilson (David Hyde Pierce) is preparing for a dinner party with his friends. His house is spotless and appointed in hip and trendy furniture. The wines, red and white, are chilled. The main course is perfectly timed and will be ready exactly at the right moment. Meanwhile, John Taylor (Clayne Crawford) is a bank robber with a seriously injured foot. He’s hunting through the city for a place to hideout for the night until he can make his getaway the following morning and has found himself outside Warwick’s door. Having swiped information from Warwick’s mailbox, he manages to con his way inside and seems to be set for a perfect, quiet evening. After all, Warwick’s even having that big dinner party! However, John should be very careful to keep his temper and violence in check… because there’s far more to Warwick than meets the eye.
There is more to the story than this, but I’d be doing an injustice
to the film if I revealed anything else. The Perfect Host,
the debut feature from director Nick Tomnay, works because of David
Hyde Pierce, the liberal amounts of dark humor, and how effectively
much of it is shot. When I initially mentioned I was reviewing “a new
David Hyde Pierce movie” to a friend, he immediately
thought of Niles
Crane from “Frasier”. While there’s a bit more to Pierce’s character
than that, there is also a substantive amount of Niles here too. This
all works in The Perfect Host with Pierce as a legitimately
funny foil to John’s well-played conman. It can go a little
over-the-top at times, but overall it’s a very likeable performance
that plays perfectly into the dark comedy in the script. One example is
when John reveals his grisly foot injury and drips blood on Warwick’s
floor. Warwick, presently under duress, promptly becomes visibly
unsettled by it and quickly promises to help John with it. He grabs a
cloth, runs over, and… cleans the blood off the floor instead much to
John’s anger. Moments like that are why this movie is very much a
darkly comic thriller more than your average “cat-and-mouse” thriller.
While some of the jokes might feel weird, unsettling, or strange in the
context of how they appear, just about all of them still hit their mark
and at least elicit a groan, smile, chuckle.
Visually, Writer/Director Tomnay is able to combine a few different
styles of filmmaking to create his final product. In particular, for
reasons I can’t fully explain due to spoilers, the shots in Warwick’s
house are brilliant, keeping the viewer in the same deeply confused
state as one of the characters. He subtly shows certain elements
through his shots and set design as well, like swords in a
not-out-of-place rack on the wall, that quietly foreshadow possible use
later on. The editing is also very 
effective. In an early pre-title
sequence, The Perfect Host feels more action-packed and
serious as we quickly follow John’s attempts to arrange his getaway and
get rid of evidence. There’s also a great sequence intercutting Warwick
and John playing a game of chess with a scene of John doing the same
with his girlfriend, underlining differences in the tone and events
surrounding the two scenes.
Unfortunately, the editing is not quite as effective in early flashbacks. Flashbacks are generally not a bad idea in a film, but they have to make sense as to why they’re there and how they’re used. The Perfect Host gets the “why” right, explaining more of John’s backstory. It’s the “how” it screws up by initially using them very quickly and with odd blurring not seen much otherwise in the film. While the flashbacks get clearer as the movie goes on, their initial usage definitely takes the viewers out of certain scenes and confuses them.
While The Perfect Host is an EXCELLENT dark comedy, it’s not as good a thriller as it could be and, thus, doesn’t feel like a “complete” film. When the viewer is supposed to be feeling unsettled at some points, the degree of tension is undercut by just how weird and bizarre some of the goings-on are. Without spoiling, I imagine that scenes involving a conga line and a “Gillman” mask are meant to be somewhat chilling, but the events themselves are so funny and weird that the viewer doesn’t feel the fear the director may have intended.
In the end, I highly recommend The Perfect Host as a fun, quirky dark comedy, not as a gripping thriller. It’s well-acted, generally well-shot, and has a uniquely funny script. I definitely liked this particular soiree overall… would have liked it more had the suspense been handled better.
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