Another Eli Roth vehicle but this time the full on gore of his previous movies is tamed in favour of a more thriller like theme. Keanu Reeves is Evan, an architect who we see as having a near perfect life, with the wife (Ignacia Allamand), kids and house ticking all the boxes of the expectation of what is conceived as the American dream. His wife and kids are away for the weekend while he is home alone working on a major project when two young women Genesis (Lorenza Izzo) and Bel (Ana DeArmas) knock on his door in the middle of a rain storm claiming to be lost and looking for a house where they were invited to a party.

They managed to convince Evan to invite them in to dry off while he calls them a cab. The interaction starts playfully enough with light flirting but in the forty five minutes that they are waiting on the cab to arrive the girls make it very clear of their intentions and while Evan is initially the perfect gentleman he is gradually broken down into engaging in some sexual activity with the women.

The following morning Evan is full of remorse and as he finds the women making themselves at home he asks them to leave but things then start to take a turn for the darker as they claim that Bel is underage and that if he doesn’t do as the ask they will call the police claiming they have been raped. This is just the tip of the iceberg however as their demands become more and more elaborate and the tension builds until the inevitable snap occurs and it is then a back and forward game of how far either side is willing to go to end the situation.

The issue with the movie is that the women feel more annoying than dangerous with their screeching noises and childish acts and while Bel adequately pulls off a potentially under age girl, (especially when she appears in the schoolgirl outfit), Genesis, if the stripper like name didn’t give it away, always seems to calculating in her demeanor to be anything other than trouble and their actions swing wildly from irritating Evan to full on life threatening with no real end point. Even after the movie is finished there still seems no real point to their actions, they are far too in control to be psychotic and if it was just all for fun then it’s a lot of very hard work for a small piece of fun so I still don’t understand their motivation.

While it ends up being an okay thriller there are far too many plot leaps to make it a coherent story and while it is nice to see Roth tone it down a little and try something other than full of horror there felt like there was something missing from the movie and maybe that is what it was, a bit of actual purpose and danger to the situation.

DJ Speaks Rating: 4.5 Out Of 10