Mark Reviews Movies: HOMEWRECKER

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 2, 2020

There's something wrong with Linda (Precious Chong), one of the two women at the center of Homewrecker. Co-writer/director Zach Gayne's two-hander about jealousy, resentment, and regret spends much of its time in a kind of battle with the character, before and even as the character herself engages in a more literal kind of battle with the other one. Is Linda worthy of sympathy, as uncomfortable as she may make us, or is she just some caricature of monstrous envy?

The movie, which begins with some sense of realism before sharply veering into the realm of twistedly comedic thriller, definitely has an answer to that question. It's neither particularly thoughtful nor especially worth the amount of time spent developing the character.

While at a fitness class, Michelle (Alex Essoe), a married woman trying to become pregnant, meets Linda, who provides her a tampon when she realizes the latest attempt has failed. At a local coffee shop, Linda joins Michelle, who tries to hint that she's not interested in conversation—a hint that Linda doesn't take.

Eventually, Linda convinces Michelle, an interior decorator, to come to her home for a consultation. The reserved and uneager-to-displease Michelle accepts the invitation.

The first act is dedicated to establishing palpable unease through the mismatch of these characters. Linda is overly persistent in her pursuit of just having someone to keep her company, and there's a real sense of the character's loneliness, either creating her personality or caused by it. She's also highly judgmental in a way that goes from passive-aggressive to downright aggressive, and with her proclamation of loving "drama" and nostalgia for things from her youth, we get a sense of someone who hasn't moved on from the past, because it was a time before all this misery.

Michelle isn't nearly as thoroughly developed, and that's an early sign of the movie's ultimate intentions. The rest of the story has to the two women engaging in a battle of wits and fists, as Linda holds Michelle captive for reasons that aren't too mysterious when one considers the title.

There is still some decent character work here, and in addition to clearly defined performances, Chong and Essoe (both of whom also co-wrote the screenplay) are quite adept at raising and modulating the tension between these characters. Homewrecker, though, undermines most of that with its formulaic turn toward a lengthy, violent confrontation.

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