Review of The Perfect Host (2010) by Paul W — 20 Oct 2011

Dinner Parties Are A Dying Art.

Good Film! I like alot the element of surprise the director brought to this film which made it unseemly so darn good wickedly fun and entertaining. The Perfect Host is not a horror film, although it's easy to see how it could have been made as one, but a psychological, cat and mouse thriller of tables (dining tables) turning and being turned as small time hood meets major lunatic! This is typically a film to watch once and never again since it isn't one that you'll always remember but it has a kind of devilish goodness to it. Enjoy!

Warwick Wilson is the consummate host. He carefully prepares for a dinner party, the table impeccably set and the duck perfectly timed for 8:30 p.m. John Taylor is a career criminal. He's just robbed a bank and needs to get off the streets. He finds himself on Warwick's doorstep posing as a friend of a friend, new to Los Angeles, who's been mugged and lost his luggage. As the wine flows and the evening progresses, we become deeply intertwined in the lives of these two men and discover just how deceiving appearances can be. With outstanding performances by David Hyde Pierce and Clayne Crawford, cowriter/director Nick Tomnay takes us on a suspense-filled ride where nothing is as it seems. 'The Perfect Host' is a slippery psychological thriller that exposes true human nature and reveals just how far we're willing to go to satisfy our needs.