Mark Reviews Movies: PRIVATE PROPERTY (2022)

Private Property, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 12, 2022

Chadd Harbold's Private Property is a fairly faithful remake of writer/director Leslie Stevens' 1960 film of the same name, which was considered lost for decades until its relatively recent re-discovery. When people complain about remakes in broad strokes, they eliminate the potential of one such as this.

Harbold's movie is dealing with source material that was all but forgotten for a long stretch of time and, even now, isn't exactly well-known. The original could use some tinkering and updating, and Harbold's screenplay re-structures the plot and expands one character in ways that make it decidedly different.

The story of the original deals with two men, whose motives and behavior actually can't be revealed this early or at all in a review of the new version. That's the biggest narrative change to Harbold's remake, and whether or not that change is effective is irrelevant at this point, too. The shift of the plot, into two separate perceptions of the same timeline of events, alters this version's focus and impact—somewhat for the better, if only at first and not quite in the big picture.

This time, the story is actually about Kathryn (Ashley Benson), an aspiring actress, currently making the rounds in short films, and the wife of successful movie producer Richard (Jay Pharoah), who probably could get his wife a substantial role in a feature if he or she wanted that. Kathryn insists that she wants to earn her big break on her own, and while Richard has accepted that, there's a bit of tension in how little the husband seems to care about even the idea of helping his wife in her career.

The marriage is at a standstill. While Kathryn is still making an effort (Kathryn tries to undress her husband when he comes home from work, and she puts on some new lingerie before going to bed), the husband's attempts to make any effort seem to be non-existent (Richard made reservations for dinner and has to stay dressed, and he's fast asleep by the time his wife enters the bedroom in her new outfit).

Harbold displays genuine attention to the failing dynamics of this relationship. In Benson's performance, too, there's a real consideration for Kathryn's perhaps misplaced love for her husband, as well as the frustration of being ignored and unappreciated personally and professionally (This is a significant change from the original, which kept the wife as a background fixture and target—more a MaGuffin than an actual character—although the point of that film was quite different from this version's opening act).

Enter a new gardener named Ben (Shiloh Fernandez), who takes over after Kathryn and Richard's usual one was arrested. He's a mysterious smoothie, and over the course of the three days that she knows him in this story, Kathryn finds him to be increasingly mysterious, smooth, and attractive. When Richard hastily announces he's going out of town on business on that third day, Ben arrives on his day off and ends up having lunch—and plenty of drinks—with her and new neighbor Ed (Logan Miller), whom Ben seems to know a bit better than he probably should under the circumstances.

There is, of course, something else and far more sinister going on beneath the surface of this get-together, these flirtations, and what happens after that. Harbold makes that point clear, with an introductory montage of the aftermath of some chaos and a dead body floating in a pool. Just as to reveal the specifics of what Ben—if that's his real name (It's not)—wants and how he's connected to the neighbor would give away this version's game, though, the fact that Harbold has made his version into a twisty game of separate perspectives, which reveal hidden information and secret motivations upon the swap of viewpoints, undermines its own impact.

This definitely isn't the course of Stevens' original screenplay, which was upfront from the very start about its two mysterious strangers, but that's irrelevant. No, this movie gives us a relaxed but observant character study, only to suddenly veer into a completely disconnected method and tone.

On the positive side, Fernandez, whose performance feels a bit stilted and unconvincing as the charmer of a gardener, reveals an eerie sense of emotional vacancy and practiced behavior in his performance (which explains the earlier—in the movie's chronology, not the plot's—quality of the character). The reality of what's happening in this tale is unapologetically disturbing, but knowing what we already know about the course of Ben's own game from Kathryn's view of events, there's little by way of tension in realizing how that game is being played.

As for Kathryn herself, she is shoved into the backdrop for the second act, transformed into an unfortunate cliché in the generic and predictable third act, and begins to feel removed from the story. The resolution's return to her comes across as a hollow act of apologizing for the character's abrupt dismissal. That's appropriate, perhaps, because, with that character's departure, Private Property eliminates its potential, not only to be different from its source, but also in general.

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