First Things First…
I was so intrigued to watch this last year when it came out. I had heard great things about it, but I knew nothing about it—and I had heard it was better to go in blind. That turned out to be true. In some ways you can call it shocking, but it’s such a surprising movie that I’m glad I didn’t even know the premise.
Now I’m watching it for the first time since then. Knowing where the twists and turns come in, I’m not sure if it’s going to be a much worse experience. Luckily, I loved it the first time, and I think it’s entertaining enough that I’ll enjoy it even when it has no surprises left for me.
6 Things I Like
6. The Dilapidation of Detroit
I don’t know a lot about Detroit, so I don’t know if the neighborhood where the Airbnb is located is portrayed accurately. But it’s an effective setting. When Keith and Tess are trying to figure out their predicament at the start of the movie, he mentions the neighborhood not looking great. She hadn’t seen it yet because she arrived when it was already dark. So it’s easy at that point to wonder if he’s just trying to manipulate her into staying with him. But when she leaves for her job interview the next morning and sees it in daylight—giving us our first look at it too—it’s awful. And it becomes all the sadder and more powerful when we see how idyllic it was in the 80’s during Frank’s backstory.
5. Jarring Transitions
The first 40-ish minutes are all about Tess and Keith at this ill-fated Airbnb, and the ups and downs of the tenuous bond they form. It culminates with an impossibly tense sequence where Keith has gone even farther into the tunnel beneath the house, Tess follows him against her better judgment while scared out of her mind, and we finally see the “daughter” bash Keith’s head against the stone wall until it basically explodes.
Cut away to black, and next thing you know we’re watching Justin Long drive a convertible down the Pacific Coast Highway, singing and bopping along to “Riki Tiki Tavi” without a care in the world. We’re suddenly in another movie.
Eventually we find out how his character, AJ, intersects with Tess. And their section of the movie leads to them being locked in a cage together—AJ terrified and Tess wild-eyed—before we cut to another new character, Frank, in the flashback to the nice neighborhood and the dawning of this house of horrors.
I’ve heard some complaints about these transitions making the tone uneven. But they kept me on my toes and made me wonder what I was watching in the BEST possible way. I was blown away by the ingenuity it took to weave together such divergent stories and tones.
4. A Renter’s Guide to Getting the Most Out of Your Airbnb
I feel like AJ might’ve read a book like this.
He’s despicable in almost every way—so against type for Justin Long—but his funniest moments come after he discovers the tunnel.
Tess’s first reaction after opening the hidden door and seeing the tunnel was, “Nope.” And when she starts exploring anyway, she gets freaked out and runs back as soon as she finds the room with the bed, bucket, and camera.
AJ, on the other hand, finds that same room and immediately googles whether he can include it as an extra room when he lists the property.
Turns out the poor guy can’t—but he can count the space in total square footage. (Hooray for duping renters with loopholes and technicalities!)
So this asshole is down there with his tape measure, moving the disgusting bed that has probably been party to dozens of rapes and murders out of the way without a second thought so he can measure. And as the tunnel keeps going and going, he gets happier and happier.
3. They’re All Barbarians
“Do I look like some kind of monster?”
Keith
It’s easy to see how Tess is a barbarian. She fights through everything—even getting shot and then thrown off a water tower by the guy she rescues—and still manages to survive. Heroic, beast stuff right there.
But she’s the only one who’s a barbarian in a positive way.
The main message I took away from this movie is that it’s a treatise on men. And all three main men in the story—even Keith—are barbarians in their own way.
Frank is the most obvious and egregious example. He abducted and raped dozens of women at least, videotaped his assaults, and I’d assume killed them eventually. His monstrous daughter is the unfortunate result of him breeding with his own daughters—maybe even his own granddaughters. As the helpful neighbor says about them, “She’s not even the worst thing in that house.”
Then there’s AJ, who eventually admits he raped his costar. But listening to him talk with his buddy at the bar as they get drunk, every sentence out of his mouth is grosser than the previous one. It’s nothing but one attempted (and piss-poor) justification after another. At one point, he even says, “I’m a persistent dude” to describe how he eventually “convinced” the woman to sleep with him.
And that’s not even to mention that, despite at times seeming like he wants to be a better person, when push comes to shove he actually throws Tess off the water tower—after she’s already bleeding out because he accidentally shot her—to try to save himself.
So, Frank is the vile monster… AJ the narcissistic liar and manipulator… that just leaves Keith…
And Keith is certainly not the evilest of the men, but he is the most insidious barbarian of all…
The White Knight.
Think about it…
He’s all too happy to be chivalrous for shit that doesn’t actually matter and Tess doesn’t really need his help with. He’ll carry her bags in from the car because “that’s how he was raised.” And he’ll sleep on the couch so she can take the bedroom because he’s such a nice guy. But when it comes to calling around to try to find a hotel room for the night, she does that—not him. Why? Just because he was in the house first? They both have a right to be there, but he doesn’t have any more right to it than she does. Yet she was willing to massively inconvenience herself and leave to rectify the situation. He wasn’t.
And how about this attempt at niceness…
He asks Tess if she’d like him to make her a cup of tea and she says no. But he’s such a “nice guy” that he ignores her and makes her a cup anyway, even though he knows she’ll be uncomfortable with it because if she doesn’t watch him, he could drug the tea.
He also gets all in his feelings when Tess asks to see his rental confirmation just to be sure he’s telling the truth, even though she showed him hers before he even let her in.
And the next day, when she’s clearly freaked out and ready to hightail it out of there, he doesn’t take her seriously when she tells him about the hidden tunnel and the room. He basically bowls her over and insists on checking it out for himself.
This isn’t to equate anything Keith does with the heinous crimes of the other two. But you can still see how dangerous someone like Keith can be simply because he doesn’t recognize that none of his “niceness” is genuine kindness or thoughtfulness, and his dismissiveness of Tess on multiple occasions shows he doesn’t view her as his equal.
2. Star-making Performance
Georgina Campbell is phenomenal in this, and I hope it leads to bigger things for her.
Even though Tess makes a few bad decisions, they’re always in the name of helping others—even when they don’t deserve her help or her kindness. That, plus her ferocity as she fights back against her captor, make her easy to root for.
She’s also great at playing extremely terrified when she follows after Keith all the way into the tunnel.
As she goes from annoyed, to exasperated, to unnerved, to hopeful, to terrified, to courageous she always shows a ton of heart. I loved her performance from beginning to end.
1. Unnerving
The first 40 or so minutes of the movie, when you don’t know what’s going on, are totally unnerving. It’s clear something very wrong is happening in that house, but it’s not clear whether Keith is part of it. I genuinely didn’t know his role in any of it until the moment he’s killed.
Being stuck in a situation like that—late at night, not knowing anyone in town, having no place else to go, not being able to get a hotel, and essentially being trapped with a stranger—is scary. And with Tess being so on edge and suspicious, I felt like I couldn’t relax for that entire section of the movie.
2 Things I’m Mixed About
2. Sympathy for a Monster
I’m not quite sure how to feel about the daughter. She’s clearly not the worst villain in the movie—not even close. It’s not her fault she is what she is. She deserves pity for being born that way.
But what she is—in addition to an aspiring mother that just wants to love her “babies”—is a predator, torturer, and murderer.
1. Monster Reveal
I just talked about how the first 40ish minutes of the movie are the best part.
Well, the moment we first see the daughter/monster and realize Keith is okay (at least, he’s not part of the horrendous shit going on there), I stopped being scared. I can’t say the movie didn’t keep surprising me, which is good. But I knew from this point forward that I was watching a monster movie, more or less, and not a movie more like The Strangers.
Even though there are still bad, bad people in the movie, Tess is never in danger from Frank, since he’s on his deathbed. And the danger she’s in from AJ is very real, as we see, but it’s not the tense, unnerving kind. It’s the impulsive kind that can shock you in the moment but isn’t going to keep you on the edge of your seat.
2 Things I Don’t Like
2. How Does AJ Own the House?
Why on earth does AJ have this random rental property in his hometown? And how did he ever gain possession of it if Frank never left? Did Frank sell it and just move into the hidden tunnel permanently? I wish they would’ve explained this.
1. Stop Helping These Assholes!
For all her bravery, ferocity, and goodness, Tess also comes off a bit dumb. Like, I know she and Keith eventually hit it off to some degree the night before. But after finding what she found in that tunnel—and then having him totally blow off her concerns, even telling her she sounds crazy—why does she still feel obligated to give him time to explore for himself? She doesn’t owe him an effing thing.
And to go back to help AJ after she escaped—hey, I guess it speaks to her stellar character. Her parents should be proud. But it doesn’t seem realistic that she’d go back into that nightmare again.
Tim Matassa
