House Guest, a.k.a. House Guest Massacre is one of those independent little or no budget movies floating around, especially in the internet age, and I was brave enough to sit down and watch it.
I can’t but copy and paste the storyline from IMDB as written by someone, as it gives pretty much a nice synopsis of it:
“A vicious murderer is on the loose and the entire city is on edge. It’s the perfect evening for Rob Murphy (Alex Vincent Star of Child’s Play 1 & 2 and the Curse Of Chucky) and Jen Murphy (Maylin Morera) to lock the doors and have a night at home with some friends. But what happens if one of the guests you’ve invited, is in fact the brutal killer that the city is fearing? House Guest is a tense thriller that locks you inside the doors of the Murphy home, where new relationships are formed, a Father and Son bond is tested, and a Brother and Sister struggle to stay alive. “
Well, almost true, but tense thriller you will very probably miss. So, let’s get back to the beginning and see what this movie has to offer.
House Guest is indeed in a suspense/thriller genre and while not original at all (how many times you’ve seen this?), it’s not as bad as some reviewers would you like to believe – and not as good as other praise it. 5.6 score on IMDB does it justice.
The story is simple. There’s a killer on the loose, killing at least 4 people (2 guys murdered we don’t see – it’s only referred on the news by a news reporter played by Michelle Yeager – but we do see the murder of a guy and the nice blond girl with even nicer boobs, played by lovely indie actress Krystal Pixie Adams), so, it’s not surprising that with parents out of the house, Rob (Alex Vincent) and Jen Murphy (Maylin Morera) (and for once they are siblings, not a couple) have decided to stay indoors and invite some friends over.
And they came! First, we are introduced to Chase (Brian Jalbert, director Jake Jalbert’s brother) as Jen’s boyfriend of sorts, and then another couple crashes in the house, this time Becky (played by Dee (Danielle) Marcucci) and Seth (Nick Canning). To complete the line up, later in the movie Chase’s father Micky Diamond (Randall Speakman) also shows up. Oh yeah, and don’t forget the pizza guy!
Now, the pacing is quite slow as the director tries to build up some story and tension along with it, but unfortunately, what might look good in the script, it’s not really well translated on the screen.
This is not necessarily a critique, it’s stating how things are. But maybe I just have expected some more wild “hey, parents are not home, let’s party” stuff, but instead we have a card playing session and quite a stupid “truth or dare” game.
The actual tense stuff – folks being threatened – could be, I guess, done better, but overall, it’s passable. Some effects could also be better, but we’re talking low budget here, not Hollywood production, so that’s OK with me. And I have to commend the makers of this movie for not going over the top with gore, as many aspiring indie producers tend to. Actually, the kills were very decent and not distracting (although, again, the kicking sequence was little laughable, but it’s easy to criticize, right?).
As per actual filming, I guess they do the right thing to use one location (a house) for a whole movie, but I guess this whole flick would work much better as a short in some antology.
I wouldn’t dismiss it, as it was not bad at all, unfortunately, that talking stuff was quite dragging and holding the whole movie down.
The good parts? Nice soundtrack, boobs and girls were beautiful, so yours truly won’t complain (we’ve seen much worse, don’t we), however I doubt if I would watch it ever again as there’s nothing really memorable. Apart from – have I mentioned it? – Krystal’s boobs.
