The Perfect Host Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

The Perfect Host Blu-ray Movie Review

A less than perfect thriller.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater April 27, 2012

What a weird little film. I’m almost at a loss as to how to even go about beginning to describe The Perfect Host. The best I can come up with is “serial killer psycho-comedy thriller,” which will have to do for now, I guess. The film comes from the mind of writer/director Nick Tomnay, who made a short by the same name a few years back in Australia and was goaded into remaking it as a feature. This probably wasn’t a good idea. Whenever you take a concise short and try to expand it into 90-minute territory, you’re bound to end up with fluff and contrivances, desperate measures to fill out the runtime. And while I haven’t seen the original short--just clips from it--I have a feeling that that’s exactly what happened here. The first act is promisingly taut, and even the middle section has its share of lunatic glee, but ultimately the film goes down a rabbit hole of unlikely plot machinations and credulity-stretching twists. Eventually, if you’re like me, you’ll just give up and stop following, not because the story is particularly complicated, but because it has vast gaps in narrative logic that just aren’t worth trying to leap.

The film opens in Los Angeles with career criminal John Taylor (Clayne Crawford) looking for a place to lay low after robbing a bank earlier in the day. He pulls into a random upper class neighborhood and tries to talk his way into an old woman’s house by pretending to be a Jehovah’s Witness, but the lady slams the door in his face and calls him "wolf." She's right. He is a predator, of course--willing to use and abuse others to make his escape--but it turns out that he's not quite at the top of the crazy criminal food chain. Armed with a few tidbits of personal information gleaned from a postcard in the mailbox across the street, John cons his way into the keenly decorated home of Warwick Wilson (Frasier's David Hyde Pierce)--the "perfect host" of the title--who's busy roasting a duck and prepping hors d'oeuvres for a soirée he's throwing later in the evening.

Warwick is tidy and effete, a sexually ambiguous connoisseur of life's finer things, and when John explains that he's a "friend of Julia" and that he's just been mugged, Warwick graciously lets him in, gives him some wine, and even invites him to stay for the party. For John, this is a too-good-to-be-true scenario, and indeed it is. The sedative Warwick placed in the wine eventually takes hold, and John wakes up tied to a dining room chair as the attentive host makes smalltalk with his "guests."

I put "guests" in quotes because there are no guests. Not real ones, anyway. Warwick is clearly some kind of delusional lunatic, with a rolodex filled with imaginary friends he's fond of inviting over for dinner. And lest you're tempted to write me angry "spoiler alert!" messages, let me just say buh-buh-buh-baby, you ain't seen nothing yet. The Perfect Host goes nuts with plot twists, power reversals, and head-scratching coincidences, and I promise I won't ruin any of the big ones for the three of you out there who may still want to see the film after we're done here.

The evening gets progressively worse for John. Warwick isn't just a psychopath, he's an apparently homicidal psychopath, and we let out a big uh oh when he breaks out a scrapbook that shows the gory fun 'n' games that accompanied his last shindig. If that weren't enough, he drags John into another room for a screening of a Super-8 short film that shows Warwick in a robe and stage makeup, maniacally cutting himself with an enormous kitchen knife. Now, here you might think The Perfect Host is about to delve into the standard-issue torture porn-type stuff-- maimings and eviscerations and cruel sadism--but no, the film is more of a bonkers black comedy. As the night wears on, Warwick's illusory party swings between kooky and ominous. One minute, he's joining a conga line or dancing on the table to Rose Royce's "Car Wash," and the next he's offering John a cocktail that looks conspicuously like anti-freeze. If there's any fun to be had in The Perfect Host, it's watching David Hyde Pierce let loose, sashaying across the room greeting phantom revelers, humping the air--he could probably win the national "Air Sex" championships-- and making extreme politeness look exceedingly creepy.

There are fleeting moments of what's gonna happen next tension, especially early in the movie, but The Perfect Host flat-out loses it in the last half, with narrative turns that are so contrived and unlikely that the only appropriate response is huh? Like I said, I won't spoil it, but the entire plot hinges on a coincidence that's not just unbelievable, it's almost insulting. Wait, you expect me to buy that Warwick was...well, you get the idea. A good thriller's surprises should feel organic, as if they couldn't have happened any other way. With The Perfect Host, you're left with the sinking disappointment that there's no way this ever could've happened.

The Perfect Host Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Perfect Host doesn't quite have perfect picture quality, but it probably looks better than you expect from a fairly low-budget thriller. The film was shot digitally, with the Red One Camera--like so many indie features over the last few years--and the 1080p/AVC encode used on the disc is decently sharp, strongly colored, and free from any overtly noticeable compression issues or other wonky picture quirks. (I spotted some brief strobing from a fluorescent light in the police station, but that's almost to be expected.) Though you will see the odd soft shot, the level of clarity is generally very strong, with visible skin and clothing textures, crisp lines, and plenty of high definition detail that would get muddled over on DVD. The film has an intentionally muted color palette that compliments the sleek interiors of Warwick's home, and though you won't see many bright, splashy colors, the hues used here are satisfyingly dense and skin tones are consistent. Contrast is carefully sculpted too; blacks are deep without endangering shadow detail, and the picture has an appreciably punchy, dimensional quality.

The Perfect Host Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film arrives on Blu-ray with a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track that gets the job done and then some. Most of the film consists of conversations between Warwick and John, and the dialogue is always cleanly recorded, brightly reproduced, and easily understood. But there's more to the mix than just chit-chat. Things get significantly more lively when we venture inside the groovy, swingin' world of Warwick's imagination, with party chatter and disco blasting from all sides. The music in the film all sounds great--full and clear--but it's all over the place style-wise, from the arpeggiated string and throbbing bass of the score to ironically used classical cues to Rose Royce's "Car Wash." The disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.

The Perfect Host Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Making of The Perfect Host (SD, 11:14): Writer/director Nick Tomnay talks about turning his short The Host into a feature-length film.
• HDNet: A Look at The Perfect Host (1080i, 4:36): A short promo with clips from the film and a few short interviews.
• Theatrical Trailer (1080p, 2:19)

The Perfect Host Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's ironic and unfortunate that writer/director Nick Tomnay's award-winning short The Host was remade at feature length as The Perfect Host, as it's anything but perfect. In padding out the story, Tomnay turns to the cheapest tricks in the book--gimmicky twists, WTF-inducing coincidences, and unlikely reversals. Ultimately, the film's would-be surprises are so improbable that you can really only shake your head and wonder what the director was thinking. The Perfect Host looks and sound great on Blu-ray, but this one is a cautious rental at best.