Warm apple pie. That’s what it feels like to direct your first feature. Or at least that’s what I imagine Jason Biggs would say, that directing his first feature was like warm apple pie. Yes, Jim from American Pie has grown up and is now directing Untitled Home Invasion Romance, which is, in fact, the title of the movie. It’s not like they forgot to name it. They’re trying to be clever, much like Scary Movie, Date Movie, Epic Movie, or any of those other films that tell you exactly what they are while pretending they aren’t.
Jason Biggs stars as Kevin, with Meaghan Rath playing his estranged wife, Suzie. The couple is in the middle of a trial separation when Kevin plans what he calls a second honeymoon, taking Suzie back to the town where she spent part of her childhood. The house he rents was chosen after talking to her father, but returning stirs up memories she’d rather leave buried. After arriving, the two head into town where Suzie reconnects with Heather, an old friend who is now a local police officer. Meanwhile, Kevin has secretly hired an aspiring actor named Ernie to stage a fake home invasion so he can swoop in, save his wife, and finally look like the heroic alpha male he desperately wants to be.
Naturally, absolutely none of that goes according to plan. Kevin and Suzie leave town separately, Suzie gets back to the house first, and the fake home invasion turns into a very real homicide when she kills Ernie in what appears to be self-defense. Kevin immediately realizes how spectacularly his plan has imploded, and from there the movie transforms into a dark comedy about covering up increasingly terrible decisions while Kevin slowly realizes he never actually knew his wife as well as he thought he did. As more people start looking for Ernie, including the people connected to him, things continue spiraling. Suzie’s former fiancé, Stu, played by Justin H. Min, also enters the picture as the attorney helping her navigate the legal aftermath, much to Kevin’s annoyance because it’s painfully obvious Stu still has feelings for her.
This was picked up by Republic Pictures, which never really gives me that warm fuzzy feeling. It’s not necessarily a sign that a movie is bad. It’s usually just a sign that something needed to get released somewhere. Granted, Republic was also one of the distributors behind Twinless, so every now and then they surprise me. Jason Biggs doesn’t exactly knock it out of the park as a first-time director, but he does guide the film from point A to point B with enough confidence that it stays entertaining, and there are enough darkly funny turns along the way to keep things moving.
It’s the kind of movie that doesn’t really stand out, but if it pops up on a streaming service one night, it’s absolutely capable of passing the time without making you want to put your head through a wall. I don’t see many people becoming obsessed with it or watching it twenty times, probably not even Jason Biggs, but it’s consistently enjoyable once the wheels really start coming off during the second half.
The audio description is surprisingly solid. I have absolutely no idea who the narrator is because this same voice seems to appear on countless bargain-bin productions without ever receiving a credit. At this point I just call her She-Ra because I’m still trying to provoke somebody into either telling me her name or confirming that she isn’t actually human. In an era where synthetic voices are becoming more common, the fact that she sounds exactly the same every single time has definitely made me suspicious. If She-Ra, Princess of Power, really is a human narrator, I apologize. But whoever wrote this track deserves some credit because the actual writing is much stronger than I usually expect from productions like this.
One sequence in particular really stood out. Heather, played by Anna Konkle from PEN15, searches a room filled with mounted animal heads, crossbows, and drawers packed with evidence, and the audio description does an excellent job guiding us through the space. Later on, when several of those crossbows and arrows become important again, the descriptions remain clear and specific. It’s one of those cases where the narrator may be familiar, but the writing underneath her is noticeably better than average.
As far as the cast goes, Jason Biggs surrounds himself with a handful of recognizable faces, including Justin H. Min and Anna Konkle, but interestingly he doesn’t really bring in any of his American Pie co-stars. You’d think somebody from those movies would have wanted to pop in and support his directorial debut, especially considering not everyone from that cast is still headlining major studio films. If I had one complaint, it’s Meaghan Rath as Suzie. Her performance spends so much of the first half feeling subdued that it doesn’t quite capitalize on where the character eventually goes. I almost wish someone with a little more comedic energy had played the role. Samara Weaving immediately comes to mind. She’s admittedly becoming the go-to actress for this type of material, but she’s exactly the kind of performer who could have started lighter before embracing the increasingly unhinged turns later in the movie.
Still, there’s enough unpredictability in the screenplay that Jason Biggs was smart to make this his first directing project. It’s an unassuming little movie that lets him stretch different creative muscles without asking him to reinvent the genre. All he really had to do was not completely mess it up, and I don’t think he does. In fact, I almost wish the screenplay had somehow landed on the Coen brothers’ desk years ago because I could easily imagine them taking this basic setup and turning it into something even darker, stranger, and more memorable.
Honestly, instead of getting dumped into straight-to-PVOD purgatory by Republic Pictures before eventually finding a streaming home, this feels like the sort of movie that should have just premiered on Hulu from the beginning. It reminds me of the kind of modest original they regularly pick up, something like Pizza Movie. There’s nothing especially groundbreaking here, but compared to a lot of the interchangeable streaming slop people throw on while they’re folding laundry or ironing clothes, Untitled Home Invasion Romance steadily gets darker, weirder, and funnier as it goes. Jason Biggs is a solid lead, his first effort behind the camera is perfectly respectable, and I’ll be curious to see what he directs next. Untitled Home Invasion Romance is exactly what it promises. Romance might be stretching things a little, but it’s definitely about a home invasion. Just maybe not the one you’re expecting.
Fresh: 7.0/10
