Director: David Harari
Year: 2026
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Suspense/Thriller
Plot:
After encountering trouble in their relationship, a couple decides to honor a special commitment to show up at a friend’s party, which is then disrupted by the arrival of his long-lost cousin looking for a place to stay, throwing the situation further out of control when his intentions become clear.
Review:
Overall, this was a pretty troublesome and disappointing genre effort. Most of this is due to the sluggish and rather bland relationship drama that goes in an insufferable direction, not just because the characters aren’t that interesting, but because of the lack of focus on what turns this into true genre fare. The fact that we spend as much time as we do trying to understand why we care about this arguing couple who are fighting over his inability to want a baby that she’s desperate for, throw a party to announce everything to their friends that never ends up happening when they reconcile anyway, and just in general hanging out together but still devolving into conversations trying to paint their relationship as worth salvaging is rather dull to sit through. Even when his friend arrives and complicates matters, there’s still not enough of an immersive lure in what’s happening within here, as the group just isn’t that fun to be around with bland problems and real genre scares anyway.
Now, this does get a bit of a reprieve in the finale when it starts to become apparent that something is off with the cousin, not just in the way he continuously seems to irritate everyone around him with just his mere presence, but also in his ignoring social etiquette and being generally offkilter with how he approaches everything around him, this picks up somewhat. The finale, focusing on the true psychotic nature he has inside of him coming to the forefront and bringing about a series of chilling scenarios that play off the kind of disruption he causes and what he’s capable of, ends this on a fine note in terms of action but also makes this quite problematic with how he suddenly becomes the main focus instead of the arguing couple we’d been following all along. He becomes a weird character to focus on this late in the film when he hasn’t been that interesting or welcomed until then, so while the action does save it, this is a bit of a weird way to end this.
Overview: **.5/5
A decent but generally disappointing genre thriller, this one manages some watchable enough elements but is brought down by some big issues that are detrimental enough to lower this overall. Those with an appreciation for this quirky style of indie genre fare or who aren’t bothered by its drawbacks will want to give it a shot, while most others out there should heed caution.
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