3 out of 5 stars (average)
Thank you to Tricoast Entertainment and Uncork’d Entertainment for reaching out to me for 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 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 sometimes populate these things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roHuvLvA5mE
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 on February 4th, 2020. Read my interview with Chad Werner here.