"Safer at Home" exactly the cheap-thrills quarantine movie we feared
Safer at Home (2021) As cynical as its misnomer title, “Safer at Home” is exactly the exploitative, cheap-thrills quarantine movie one worried would be spawned by the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and other social issues in the 2020 hellscape. So up-to-the-minute, the film not only plays out in real time but envisions a too-soon reality of a lockdown and the detection of a second and third strain of the virus two years into the pandemic. For even more verisimilitude, writer-director Will Wernick (2020’s “No Escape” ) employs the screen-life format to tell his story, co-written by Lia Bozonelis. Made out of creative ingenuity and few resources, such a format can surely bring an immediacy to any scenario, particularly in the horror or thriller genre, but it actually doesn’t do “Safer at Home” too many favors when logic needs to be a factor. It’s 2022, and COVID 20B has progressed. The death toll in the United States has risen to 12.3 million. People are still isolating themselves at home, and
