Held Hostage in My House

Held-Hostage-in-My-House
Held Hostage in My House

The plot, if we can call it that, revolves around Dawn Van Brocklin (Smart) a single mother who has gotten the idea of leasing her home to strangers. She rents Airbnb the hell out of what she calls Chalet in the Country to ensure that she and her son Charlie survive as she attempts to establish herself as an artist looking for a breakthrough. Her ex Matt (Davis) does not take her property rental well and informs Dawn that he will apply for full custody of Charlie because one of her tenants posed a dangerous situation at the house (How little do these people know). We learn all about this through the use of flashbacks as time goes, since at the beginning of the film, Dawn is in a bound position of lying on her bed in a hotel and trying to understand who hit her with a stone from behind the head.

Was it the Russian looking lady who allegedly employed the house for a whorehouse, which Dawn managed to dismantle with the help of the police? Was it the homosexual couple who used to rent the neighborhood only for the wife to almost discover the plot and accuse Dawn of not protecting her husband? Was it the wife swinger and their wife swinger who rented the house for a role playing game and requested Dawn to help them? Was it her former fan her manager, who wished to see her dead so that he could sell her works after her death? Was it her ex-husband, who without her developing even suspicion, shortly after receiving a concern about the custody battle told the other person it was time for B Plan? Who knows, because the person who did this makes the least bit of sense for all the confusion.

Director and writer Anna Elizabeth James had what seemed to be a breakout hit on Netflix with 2021 Deadly Illusions, however, a closer look at the film’s IMDb reviews shows that opinion about the film is not much different than about this one calling it equally witless. I must however give it to her for being one of the few women in the filmmaking industry who has the guts to actually go through with a project that has the potential of being made. But there’s only so much slack one can cut for James, especially if the general consensus is her films are abysmal and less entertaining than the reviews they receive. According to her bio, James earned an MFA degree from the School of Cinematic Arts at USC, and that makes me wonder, just what is an MFA exactly? Because this movie doesn’t showcase a single bit of writing talent. If being rude, mean, or call it as it is there’s no way around it Held Hostage In My House was two hours of my life I will never ever get back. Many distinguished and good indie movies have been made in the past, well received but the people who created these don’t get finances, then how come someone with disgusting, poorly made and shot movies is capable of making hit? Unfair. Well, I won’t go as far as to say the direction was awful. It at least does the job which is good enough.

In addition, I argue that if you were going to incur all the trouble of seizing someone and imprisoning them, you want to show up a few times to let them know what you want. Not just leave them there to die of hunger, which is what they would presumably do otherwise (and the fact that Dawn does not defecate in the sheets after several days of being alone on that bed is, let me say, a nice departure from realism). And what purpose do the fire ants serve in the narrative and why is there a couple of slices of peach pie in the room where Dawn’s bed is? Yes, she bakes pie before she goes into her hostage situation, but why would she take them into the bedroom in the first place, for the fire ants to come in and devour, which makes no sense. (Some do, one or two eventually, but those particular ones are not the threat that James would like us to extend ourselves to believe they are.) In this script, there is simply an absurd level of incompetence everywhere, but at least at the very end, the real artist OF Dawn’s Paintings was given the credit.

Regarding credits, it is rather strange that the other main actors decide to hold this credit on their IMDb pages. It’s no wonder that Amy Smart, tired of playing the nice girls and vaguely confused mothers (Stargirl), is inclined to do something more juicy and dramatic, and does an excellent job at making the audience sympathize with Dawn. Though the film’s conclusion makes no sense, it is still gratifying to see her get the last word. As far as Matt Davis is concerned, he does look like someone that one can associate with being responsible, and Greer Grammer of course combines her portrayal, so one is not quite sure whether she is meant to be on Plans A or B (though she is later seen in the film in a scene where one would assume she is in on it, which is totally out of place whoever decided to clown her makeup in that scene should be shot). Harrison Fox is quite a good child actor, and when he is worried about talking to his mother while stuck on a camping trip with his father, you can sense his discomfort.

Billy Zane and his atmosphere-altering fright wig portray amusing roles in the whole proceedings, but none of it is even sufficiently close to making Held Hostage In My House remotely watchable.

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