Thank you to Tricoast Entertainment and Uncork'd Entertainment for reaching out to me on this review.
I have had many pleasant experiences with Airbnb. On paper, the idea of paying someone to stay in a home or apartment (with a potential social circle of roommates) sounds great, but it can also go very wrong. Chad Werner's A Perfect Host (also known as Adonis Complex) is one such example of the latter, offering a creepy, mostly believable horror movie with an 80'sesque synthesizer score and characters who act realistically rather than the morons who normally populate these things.
Longtime friends Sam (Jeff McQuitty) and Avery (Koko Marshall) have booked a lakeside Airbnb for the weekend and are looking forward to a good time with friends despite some messy personal history. All seems well until they meet their host Tad (Brady Burleson Johnson), a fitness fanatic who proceeds to interrupt their weekend at every turn. Tad's increasingly boundary-pushing behavior leads Sam and Avery to realize their perfect host may be anything but.
I've always enjoyed films about sinister people psychologically messing with others, and A Perfect Host fits that bill. Writer-director Chad Werner gets believable performances from his cast and slowly creeps up the tension via the natural sounds of the area as well as a synthesized score. Some of the camera choices are a tad confusing (Occasionally the camera will focus on seemingly random objects), but it is overall well-shot and builds to a solid finale. The jump scares are slightly overused but always effective, and the film has occasional humor to offset the tension. Overall, A Perfect Host is a solid horror movie with believable characters and a creepy vibe. Book A Perfect Host.
Likely would be rated PG-13 for Some Violence and Brief Strong Language
A Perfect Host will be available on DVD and VOD February 4th, 2020.
