"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 a strict curfew has gone into effect. Since video conferencing and Zoom chats have become the new normal, a circle of friends tries to bring a night out in Vegas to all of their homes virtually one night. The birthday boy is Evan (Dan J. Johnson), whose girlfriend Jen (Jocelyn Hudon) is pregnant but has only told singleton Harper (Alisa Allapach), a longtime friend to Evan. Evan’s other friends, Liam (Daniel Robaire) and his lawyer partner Ben (Adwin Brown), and Oliver (Michael Kupisk) and his new girlfriend Mia (Emma Lahana), join in the chat. Oliver has mailed them all party packages full of molly. Once the drugs are consumed, emotions run high in Evan and Jen’s household, leading to a heated argument and Jen on the floor with her head bleeding. None of them actually saw what happened, but none of them will come back from this.

After a montage of real news coverage and footage of President Trump assuring the country that the pandemic will cease, “Safer at Home” gets off to an involving-enough start. In large part to the actors and their banter, a basic understanding of these friends and their relations with each other is established efficiently. Evan’s core friends and girlfriend don’t really like Oliver’s new girlfriend, who’s recently divorced, and make that known to her. Once the actual conflict kicks in—and the ingestion of ecstasy has little bearing on the proceedings—the film still engages with its initial “what would I do?” scenario. It’s when Evan hides from the police showing up at his door about a noise complaint and then flees the scene in search of his car that the narrative wheels start coming off. There’s no rhyme or reason for Evan to keep filming himself on the run; even when there’s a close call with an officer, he keeps filming with his phone flashlight a conspicuous source of light. To add insult to injury, Dan J. Johnson’s performance becomes wildly uneven when the shit hits the fan, hurt further by some unbelievably cheap rear projection work once Evan gets in his car.

“Safer at Home” is almost admirable in how manipulative and single-minded it is to solely instill even more fear, but did this story need to be told right now, or at all? As pandemic-set Zoom nightmares go, 2020’s ingeniously executed Shudder original “Host” is still unbeatable. Here, a non-diegetic music score puts the kibosh on some of the urgency. In a screen-life or found-footage scenario that relies on pure naturalism, a music score just takes one out of the illusion, and the one here comes on strong and pretty much stays there like a gnat in one’s ear. More infuriating, director Will Wernick tries pulling a fast one on the viewer—and most of the friends watching—by concluding on a note that isn’t as surprising as it's supposed to be so much as it's just contrived, pointless, and off-puttingly pessimistic. At this point in time, going to a gridlocked mall where everyone’s nose and mouth are visible would actually be more believably terrifying. 

Grade: C -

Vertical is releasing “Safer at Home”  (82 min.) in select theaters, VOD & digital on February 26, 2021.