Model House
Model House
While the home invasion subgenre can be found in a myriad of horror movies; The Strangers comes to mind, it is still popular. Model House locks out five swimsuit models in a house for the weekend. This is Derek Pike’s first feature length movie, who brings his history of over 100 directed music videos to the set. The montage of the film resembles a music video in terms of pace.
The pictures look nice and the music is exciting. The issue of the film resonates with the audience, focusing on the interaction between social networks’ advocates and their fans. However, while the concept is creative, the straps are a bore. It misses an intrigue which is essential in contemporary horror. As it is, the movie is a montage of clichés with two gory masks. It is an intriguing idea, but the presentation will be disappointing to genre enthusiasts.
Model House adheres to the home invasion formula where two burglars attack the model house and take hold of the five girls. Instead of demanding cash, the attackers require all the girls to direct each other to send fake donation links through their social accounts. They demand one million dollars and, as they expect ,the girls’ followers behave exactly as one would expect. The girls gradually understand that their life is in danger and they have no choice but to act.
While the basic plot is in place, the pacing suffers. This is an 85 minute long movie but the film seems to drag on while attempting to recycle one dull horror cliché after another with only stereotypical characters. The scares aren’t particularly effective and although it does attempt to subvert a few aspects of the genre, the actual script never builds up a sense of discomfort. Even for a horror movie the dialogue is poorly written and is a sore in a very sore effort.
At times the tension is quite palpable, but the theatricality is excessive and feels forced. There is not a single point where the characters can be reduced to the ordinary archetypes of final girls. The filmo is sorely lacking any character development and feels like a collage of the things that are both horrific and comical in slasher movies. Readers looking for a plot relevant to the current issues or even a couple of well-placed turns of events will be let down. Model House has the aura of a music video as opposed to a film, which is a good direction to follow but the resolved connections between scenes are missing making the film feel unfinished.
The feature is less about survival and more about pretending to be in a survival scenario for a long time, waiting for the time to run out. It keeps the audience’s main actors busy during most of the movie and it has none of the elements salient to this style of films. There is no hide and seek, yet the film fails to show even mild thrills that are expected in a stalk and kill movie. Although the outcomes are intriguing, the film does not allow its main protagonists to rise above the stereotypes they begin with.
Nevertheless, enthusiasts of the genre will be pleased with Scout Taylor-Compton, who is the movie’s lead. In a role against type, she plays one of the film’s intruders. Although she is no more a psychopath than the other psychopaths these movies usually have as their main culprits, she does carry a certain darker versatility. Much of the film finds her in a mask which enhances her interpretation in more ways than one. Though limited by the mask and her tiny frame, her rendition in the film is quite disturbing. She even puts forward a jittery complexity that is bound to be welcomed by genre fans.
Taylor-Compton surely stands out as the best feature of the movie. Quite the opposite from the usual trope, the film’s intruders who are behind the masks get most of the attention. It is obvious that besides Taylor-Compton, Chris Zylka, known from The Amazing Spider-Man, was also the one to play the second intruder, who yet again, has a different portrayal altogether. Like with Taylor-Compton, the film was more concerned with the narrative and development of the intruders rather than with the development of the models.
Maybe it is unreasonable to expect anything from horror of our time. Model House is an empty building for the needs of horror movies. There are a few interesting and villainous performances and even fewer creative kills but the essence is more trite than original.
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- Genre: horror, Thriller
- Country: United States
- Director: Derek Pike
- Cast: Scout Taylor-Compton, Chris Zylka, Cory Anne Roberts
