Safer at Home (USA 2021: Dir Will Wernick)

Will Wernick's movies have a habit of placing entitled and often rather obnoxious young people in confined spaces and letting them figure it all out (see 2017's Escape Room and last year's No Escape). 

In his latest feature, set in the US a couple of years in the future, the country has failed to contain the Coronavirus; the latest, and most deadly strain (Covid 22C), has resulted in yet another forced lockdown amid heightening social disorder and nightly curfews; disobedience is punishable by incarceration - or worse. 

Not that you'd know about this from the group of young people gathered for one of their regular video chats  There's newly pregnant Jen (Jocelyn Hudon) who hasn't yet told her boyfriend Evan (Dan J. Johnson) the good news, although she does leak it to her bessy mate, nurse Harper (Alisa Allapach). Also on the call are gay couple Ben (Adwin Brown) and Liam (Daniel Robaire), and Evan's best friend Oliver (Michael Kupisk) and his new girlfriend Mia (Emma Lahana), who proves unpopular with the rest.

Missing their regular Las Vegas holiday together, Oliver has sent them all an envelope in the post to recreate the party vibe, containing, among other things, tabs of MDMA all the way from Japan (something we think may feature heavily in the plot but is pretty much forgotten after it happens). As the drugs start to kick in, Oliver and Mia start getting it on, Pictionary is played, there's a dance off and a game of 'never have I ever' which aims to break the ice but instead fuels tensions between Jen and Evan, resulting in harrowing consequences when the pair fight and Jen falls and splits her head open.

The incident triggers a series of quandries around what Evan should do next, as the rest of the group look on and offer solutions; if this is meant to have any wider moral or social context around choice and responsibility, actually it sounds more like the households at home commentating on a vaguely tense TV programme during an episode of Gogglebox.

The other problem with Safer at Home is the attempt to widen the action in the second half, still using the camera phone format but taking said cameras on the move; something which recalls the dodgy cinematic logic of a lot of found footage flicks. The budget doesn't allow for the scale of police enforcement suggested in the script, so the movie feels increasingly cheap and limited in scope as it progresses, and then blows it all with a silly ending which might mean more if you cared about any of the characters in the first place.

Wernick's political points scoring - the failure of the Tr*mp administration to control the virus spread, the increasing lawlessness of the police and heightening of surveillance - is diluted by the whining first world problems of the people in the story. They act stupidly, hedonistically and selfishly, and we're supposed to feel something for this lot? A very dumb film with nothing to say, however much Wernick might think he's being smart. 

Signature Entertainment releases Safer At Home on Digital Platforms from 3rd May

Escape Room (USA 2017: Dir Will Wernick)

With a title as generic as Escape Room, you could be forgiven for expecting a film full of reheated Saw-like thrills. In fact it's so generic, there was even another film of the same name released the same year. But it's not that one (which has Sean Young in it). It's this one.

Now I've had personal experience of being held in an escape room as part of a work team bonding day, so I feel I'm qualified to comment on the veracity of this movie. How it works is that a group of people are admitted to a closed and locked space, and through solving various puzzles via clues and objects placed around them, work out how to free themselves.

Sounds fun, right? Well the fun kind of depends on with whom you're playing the game. In the case of Escape Room the players aren't much fun at all - a group of entitled twenty somethings, who when we first meet them are larging it up in a swanky restaurant celebrating head of the pack Tyler's big three oh - they're so obnoxious they all hide their credit cards under a napkin and select one to take the hit for the entire meal. In a short establishing scene we've already seen how mean Tyler can be, when he disses a passing homeless guy from the safety of a car - his girlfriend Christen is clearly long suffering, and there's also a tension between the two hinting at Tyler's potential infidelity.

Christen surprises Tyler and the rest of the group with invitations to an escape room event (at $1000 dollars a pop, no less), and before they know it they're blindfolded and being driven to the location. "It does sound crazy but crazy sounds like a lot of fun," summarises one character. Of course in the next scene the group find themselves separated in different spaces within the facility- and must attempt to reunite and, well, escape.

How they find each other, via a set of clues and puzzles which gradually unlock doors and free up chastity belts (yep...) is quite interesting - if decidedly 'uncrazy' - but until the real menace kicks in at about the hour point, it feels like watching an episode of 'The Crystal Maze' with less Lycra. But as the movie progresses it becomes obvious that there's a shadowy architect behind the increasingly nasty games, and the object of the exercise transforms from 'will they get out in time?' to 'who will get out?' Oh and in Christen's case 'will someone ever give her a robe?'

Will Wernick is clearly less interested in making you feel for the characters in his film - they're pretty much ciphers for everything we're supposed to dislike in 21st century capitalist society (even a subplot involving Tyler's bit on the side fails to summon interest) - so he can't complain when the viewer cares little for the cast in 'peril' mode.The movie is neither as nasty as it possibly should be, or as exciting; budget limitations mean that while early scenes sustain the attention, the big tense stuff at the end feels cramped and underdeveloped, and the whole thing is basically overpolite and inconsequential.