An Ideal Host

This tried way, way too hard. It was goofy, silly and ridiculous in a not good way. After the 10th time of HAHAHA SEE WHAT WE DID THERE, I shut it off.

But I love that there are 8's and 10's here, even though it's currently under a 6. Gotta trust these reviews.

Liz and Jackson are planning the perfect party for a select group of friends, to allow them to break the news of their up and coming wedding. However there's an unwanted guest on the way from their past, who has decided to make an appearance, and who may well derail the whole thing, in a most unexpected manner. This is a great black comedy, with a sharp script that neatly uses the confines of the dinner party to tease out the past secrets and hidden resentments from the guests. With the wine flowing the carefully planned evening slow decent into bitter backbiting escalates in unexpected ways and an unexpected anarchic element to the film that just makes it so much fun. Full credit goes to the entire cast who create such a wonderful chemistry between them all, but especially credit to Nadia Collins as Liz who has to witness her carefully laid plans slowly unfold, but not let things get the better of her.

This is a legitimately fun little low budget Australian indie horror comedy. The microbudget is used well and while some of the effects show the limitations of what they were working with, that's really about all that does.

The opening, while very much comedic, set such a good stage about something being decidedly wrong about the main couple, Liz and Jackson, and their relationship beyond their obvious superficiality that I expected the nature of the horror reveal to be something entirely different than what it ended up being, even if it was honestly fairly telegraphed in retrospect. The script is smarter than I'd expected as well, and the cast does really well with the material. No intended shade to the Australian horror comedy tradition, but most of the ones I've seen previously seemed to be trying too hard to be early Peter Jackson to bother actually being well made, interesting, or even attempt anything of their own, so I'd not had the highest hopes for this movie to be different. Happily, that was not the case here at all.

Take a chance on this one if you like quirky little character-driven indie comedies alongside your dose of over the top splatter. The latter reminded me a bit more of a slightly more grounded Evil Dead approach than early Jackson or really even later Raimi - gory and at not intended to always be entirely realistic, but not necessarily fully goofy and goopy.

Imagine that you planned the perfect dinner party and then things started to go a bit wrong. And then even more wrong. How wrong? The only way to describe it would be to compare this film to a movie where King Kong was tearing the Titanic apart just before it hit the iceberg. The action just keeps getting more and more extreme until it reaches complete madness, and it goes a few steps more. This movie is great fun if you have a taste for the absurd.

It flew under the radar as i can tell. For me, it's underrated. It was very enjoyable and it kept me guessing during the first half. I didn't know if it was a dark comedy, a comedy/mystery, a comedy/horror, a comedy/sci fi etc. I won't reveal the genre because that would be a spoiler and you should watch it without reading anything about the plot. Acting was good, it's well directed, there are some funny moments and during the last 30 minutes, it gets more intense. Of course this is a movie that doesn't take itself too seriously, so don't expect anxiety-inducing scenes. Lower your expectations and you'll probably enjoy it, especially if you are in the mood for a fine, little flick that tooks place mostly in a night. Still, this is definitely not a 10/10 or 9/10, come on, reviews like this raise the expectations and viewers get then disappointed.