Pulling off a modern noir is tricky. In an age of surveillance and digital trickery, it’s hard to make secret twists and turns work. With Homewrecker, Dante Marino has taken those challenges and embraced them.
Beginning with dashboard cam footage of a street altercation, Marino pulls back to have us watching one of the participants watching it on a laptop. Tom (Bradley Snedeker) clearly isn’t in the right, but we don’t have enough evidence to tell if he’s really in the wrong, either. It’s then understandable that his new wife Jen (Adria Tennor) is standing by him through the court case.
But it’s not understandable to her adult daughter Megan (Reilly Anspaugh), an elementary school teacher hoping for help in buying a first house with her boyfriend Liam (Daniel Rashid). With Tom’s legal fees, Jen really doesn’t have money to spare. And Megan never liked Tom anyway. If only there were a way to break up her mother’s marriage…
In quick spare strokes, Marino sets up a plot that could go in many directions. At times it feels almost like a farce, moving smoothly over Megan and Liam’s plot to discredit Tom as a caper comedy.
But then the implications set in – first they fail in honey trapping Tom with their friend Ava (Jorji Diaz Fadel), which only proves that suspense novelist Tom may be a better man than Megan thinks, though maybe not as noble as Jen wants to believe. That almost plays out as sex comedy but turns darker when the younger couple hatch a plan to deepfake a sex scandal.
Marino has a lot of targets to hit in this film, and balances them well. The desperation of a young couple trying to buy a house? That’s real and resonates. A second marriage that an adult daughter distrusts? Also realistic. The dichotomy of so much being on camera while being easier to alter than most people think? Right now, that hits too close to home, and that’s what makes Homewrecker the kind of film we need right now.
These aren’t wealthy people so we can feel distanced from the action. This is our own backyard, though yours might not have a pool. All through Homewrecker, even when it’s funny and in turn disturbing, it feels real. Deepfake notwithstanding.
That rests on a solid cast. Though we don’t see Megan interacting with students, we can believe she’s good with kids. But we mostly spend time with her resentments, and Anspaugh lets instants of regret play across her face. Liam is a little shallower, but sincere.
It’s Tennor and Snedeker who could be overlooked but bring complexity to their roles that anchors the drama. Of course Jen has doubts about her husband, who is capable of rage but also great affection and tenderness. Snedeker plays a veneer of gruffness for Tom, but some of that may be hinting at the persona he has to play as a writer of thrillers. The irony in Marino’s script is that Tom is trapped in one of his own plots.
Homewrecker provides a breezy 75 minutes of suspense comedy and can be taken as that. But if you’re willing to look deeper, the issues that it raises deserve to start a conversation. And that’s my regret about not attending Cinequest in person, because I’d love to be talking about this at the bar afterward.
