Model House

In my over 2000+ reviews here, I have discussed dozens of B-movies that were essentially 90 minutes of your life you were never going to get back. Ever. MODEL HOUSE does not exactly fit that category. Let's start with the opening. Although it was probably not deliberate, the "shocker" off the top, clearly intended to hook the audience, turns out to have the highest production values of the entire movie. That 2 minute bit, which could stand entirely on its own as a cautionary tale about the dangers of social media, is so well done that it actually promises you a much better production than you actually get. The rest of the movie tries really hard to maintain that standard, but does not succeed. Speaking of standards, if you hold this film to the standards of the original 1970s slasher flicks -- which implies that you actually went to theaters in the 1970s -- it will actually pass the bar. So, as a retro exercise, you have an above-average script (with a few surprises) painfully dragging this B-movie to the finish line. However, if you hold this film to the more modern standards of horror/suspense, it gets marks for effort but still comes up short. Way short. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

Full disclosure: I only watched this to see hot chick in skimpy bikinis.

Well I got that but I got something else. The worst acting I have ever seen in my entire life. I have never ever seen such amateurish delivery of lines ever before.

Now admittedly the script is written this way (i.e. BADLY), but someone had to give the script a green light and come up for the money to make this garbage.

Nobody talks like these characters and it's clear from the very beginning that the writer is living in some sort of dark basement away from civilization and has no clue how to write dialog.

Hands down, the worst movie I've seen all year, bikinis or not.

Going to a special get-together, a young model looking to join a group of other models on a photoshoot retreat making content for their usage, but when the house is invaded by a group of armed psychos looking to scam free money out of their followers, they must get away alive.

This was a fairly underwhelming genre effort. About the only thing that works with this one is the final half where this one tends to finally bring about some intriguing action to go along with its concept. Spending most of the film featuring the group trying to accommodate their orders and getting more desperate to survive, the attempts to fight back generate a modicum of suspense and intrigue with the chasing around the house, the various escape attempts, and numerous opportunities to get the upper hand on the other provide this with a solid series of encounters that are usually quite fun. Giving us some decent blood and gore in the situation, these all manage to get some worthwhile elements to the film while there are some big issues here holding this one down. The main detriment here is the absolutely unlikable and completely unwatchable main group of girls that we're supposed to be following throughout here who are such vapid, shallow, self-centered airheads that are just not worth the time. Typical modern social media-obsessed figures that are so cluelessly inconsiderate of anything beyond the likes and followers they have on their accounts, constantly starting drama over the most useless facets of their career as possible and just completely wasting any opportunity to be sympathetic or likable in any regard, the simple premise of the film is set up to be doomed from the beginning as there's nothing to be had here from spending time around them. On top of that, it's nearly impossible to care about the intruders who are putting one of the most insultingly stupid and lame invasion attempts on the screen. Utilizing the experience to scam their followers out of money through a phony donation link on their accounts is a wholly pathetic attempt to try to comment on the dangers of social media as there's just nothing that intimidating or threatening about what's going on with their invasion of the house. Since it's not about physically threatening them either but keeping them hostage until they can gain the money they want, so much of this one is about keeping them unharmed so there's no danger in what's going on which causes a slew of boredom to emerge throughout here and leaving the film with a series of issues holding it down.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

Five girls live and work in an isolated house. They are models and social media influencers. One night, two masked intruders take them captive. They are robbers but not in a traditional way.

I couldn't care less about these girls. They are mostly annoying and I stop paying attention to them. It's a tough first thirty minutes after a fun car accident. The home invasion part is fun for a little while. At a certain point, this group of robbers would have killed everybody and burn the house down. They definitely would not carefully wrap up the bodies for disposal. I still like some of kills, but this is a pretty stupid movie.

Stumbling upon the 2024 thriller "Model House" by random chance, I opted to sit down and watch it, on account of it being a movie that I had never heard about.

I didn't know what I was in for here, so writer and director Derek Pike had every opportunity to entertain me with this movie.

While "Model House" certainly was a watchable popcorn thriller movie, it just wasn't an outstanding viewing experience. Writer and director Derek Pike was simply keeping the movie afloat by using generic horror tropes and home invasion tropes that has been done and seen countless times in other movies. And on that account, then "Model House" just didn't bring anything new to the genre. Sure, it was a watchable horror movie, though it was a generic and rather forgettable one at that.

The acting performances in the movie were good, and there were a couple of familiar faces on the cast list, with the likes of Cory Anne Roberts, Scout Taylor-Compton, Randy Wayne, Phillip Andre Botello and Ryan Merriman.

Visually then "Model House" was okay. Nothing outstanding here in terms of special effects or gore.

Watchable for what it was, "Model House" is a thriller movie that came and went. I doubt that I will ever return to watch it a second time.

My rating of "Model House" lands on a five out of ten stars.