The Perfect Host

Clever plotting and a showy lead performance by David Hyde Pierce buoy this feature debut from writer-director Nick Tomnay, which manages to meld several genres—psychological thriller, suspense, black comedy, and even a suggestion of torture-porn—into a preposterous but entertaining whole. Walking out of an L.A. bank from which he just stole $300,000, John Taylor (Clayne Crawford) realizes the cops are on to him. Injured and in desperate need of refuge, Taylor weasels his way into the home of bachelor Warwick Wilson (Pierce), who's preparing to host a dinner party. Big mistake, as it turns out. While John is quickly able to get the upper hand on the older man, Warwick eventually slips a mickey into John's wine, ties him up, and proceeds to taunt and torture him for the rest of the night—with John, when he's conscious, trying to figure out how to outsmart a serial lunatic whose dinner guests exist only in his vivid imagination. The viewer can't help but wonder how long this claustrophobic cat-and-mouse game can be sustained, but just when it threatens to become tedious and silly (well, sillier), the filmmaker tosses in some out-of-left-field twists and revelations about John's motive for committing the crime, Warwick's double life, and the pair's respective fates. Recommended, overall. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include a “making-of” featurette (11 min.), an “HDNet” behind-the-scenes segment (5 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a decent extras package for a solid indie film.] (S. Graham)