Homewrecker is a 2020 comedy/horror film about two women who befriend each other, though one becomes obsessed with the other.
Most people want to meet others when they go out or do things, make friends and such, maybe find a date. Who knows? Of course, there’s the other side of this often troubling coin too, where that person you meet becomes the planet-born visage of the very devil itself. That’s the case for young Michelle (Alex Essoe), a thirty-something married interior designer trying to decide if she’s ready for a baby when she runs into forty-something Linda (Precious Chong), who it turns out bought a one-way ticket on the crazy train and is driving it madcap straight for a derail.
There’s no messing with ambiguity when it comes to Linda, a frazzled-looking blonde we meet at a spin class already looking like she’s on a mission. In a moment of unexpected opportunity, she has a vulnerable exchange with Michelle in the locker room, and the dominos begin to fall, following her to a cafe where she soon lures the naive younger woman to her home under the impression she wishes her house redecorated. This is where we spend the remainder of the film, director Zach Gayne touring us about Linda’s house of zany horrors while the whole of what is happening becomes a labyrinth of emotional traps.
Written by Chong and Essoe, Homewrecker is a compact exercise in a battle of wits, with one a bitter, hopeless lunatic desperate for companionship and the other a hapless victim snared in her wacky home-style prison. It’s not new of course, the plot practically its own genre, yet Homewrecker spins its whimsical threads with some smart direction and a pair of unhinged performances, most especially by Chong who seems fairly fearless in giving Linda some tattered edges.
This culminates in an unraveling but revealing sequence when Linda forces Michelle to play an 80s style board game that paints in all the off-color pallets that Linda seems utterly absorbed in. But it also peels back a layer of Michelle that shifts dramatically the tone of the film in such a way that Homewrecker becomes something different altogether. Or at least temporarily. It’s hard to say. This is a complicated story. But wow does it satisfy.
Special attention goes to Doug Martsch‘s unusual score, a distorted collection of warbling electric guitar strains and wiry chaotic sounds that are the very definition of unnerving. Mix that with an 80s-esque music video like interpretation of Lisa Loeb‘s seminal Stay ( I Missed You) while truths splatter all over the screen and you end up with a deeply disturbing (and strangely comedic) movie that earns its place among the best in this league of psychological horror titles.
The thing most compelling about Homewrecker is how well it escalates, this bristling, almost crippling sense of brewing chaos that finds it way to a sensational final act that manages to subvert expectations while embracing them at the same time. It’s smart, moving, and surprisingly authentic even as much leading to it feels like an absurd chapter in an off kilter nightmare. Highly recommended.