The Perfect Husband

I caught the trailer a couple of months ago and it looked interesting even if it looked like something that I've seen before. Having seen this movie, it ended up being a very well done psychological thriller with good atmosphere, great acting, and some well done suspense.

Good: I like how subtle this movie approached the story. The first 30 minutes or so are a bit slow. It helped set the premise and develop the characters making them a strange couple with a family tragedy. Things starts to slowly unravel and the suspense is handled well with some great dread building throughout the movie. Then the horror starts and it is intense and rather freaky.

One of the most trying questions I always have for my friends whenever they have just seen a horror film that I have yet to see, is whether or not the film was scary. After all, what good is a horror film if it's not horrifying? I saw "The Perfect Husband" yesterday, and I was disappointed at first, but I slowly changed my mind. The film's story deals with a family tragedy as one couple tries to overcome the loss of their child. But, the husband (Bret Roberts) deals with his pain through torture. Now, the film's first trailer is hosted here.The clip shows the husband becoming more and more erratic. He confines his wife (Gabriella Wright), while attacking his neighbor. It seems that this vacation is just an opportunity to kill. Excellent storytelling makes this story refreshing. Movie will keep playing with audiences, making them guess which horror sub genre will it go as the movie closes in? Is it good old "there's evil in the woods!" story? Is it a ghost movie? Is it something entirely else? Good atmosphere, good use of sets and locations. Good acting by Gabriella Wright and Bret Roberts make somewhat B script seem much more larger and better then it actually is. It's moves slow at time which only adds to atmosphere and character build. Speaking of characters it's refreshing to see likable characters that you don't want to die immediately after they are introduced into the movie. It only adds up to horror when terror finally starts. Screenplay itself gives you just enough to know what's going on (mostly at the end), but thankfully nothing was over explained and too detailed. The Perfect Husband puts a very unique twist on the thriller/horror genre, and it is a very good movie in that right. 8/10

Nicola and Viola are a young married couple in the midst of marital woes after having lost a baby. A quiet weekend in the woods seems like the perfect solution but... This situation never ends well and before long, too much solitude gives birth to paranoia and jealousy and Viola finds herself in a desperate and brutal battle against the man she loves. Bret Roberts and Gabriella Wright give heart-wrenching performances as lovers pushed to the brink by grief and madness, and director Lucas Pavetto's crisp clear photography helps to elevate this thriller above others of its kind. Violent, disturbing and with a doozy of a plot twist that makes a second viewing mandatory, you'll want to marry yourself to "The Perfect Husband".

The looney relationship between the main 2 characters was not believable. There was no chemistry between the 2 people that made you believe they were ever even married. Throw in a couple plot twists and you get a half hearted thriller that just doesn't really pass the grade. 3/10

Wow this was bad. Imagine every bad quality a film can possibly have and this one most likely ticks that box. The acting is the most plain-to-see of all the things wrong. It's absolutely unbearable. Bret Roberts in particular gives one of the worst performances I can remember watching in a long time. Then add in the fact the dialogue is as poorly written as you'll ever see in the modern age of filmmaking and that just makes things twice as bad. Then there is the direction. It truly is all over the place. Loud noises are used time and time again to give the audience a jolt, yet there is never any tension in the scene to begin with. Early on there is a chase scene through the woods with literally no explanation that anything could possibly be following her. How is this supposed to make an audience feel?

I've never given a film a 1 in all my years on IMDb. I've always managed to find at least something good enough to bump it up to a 2. 'The Perfect Husband' was going to be a 1 had it not been for the twist. Not that the twist was overly good, nor in any way original, but it did make some of the unbearably bad plot holes at least explicable. It did raise another question though, which was, did the violence in the film towards women really need to be as explicit as it was? This is a very different film to the likes of 'I Spit on Your Grave' where the graphic nature of the violence has a purpose and is building us extra sympathy for the character. Here, it truly was the definition of gratuitous. A real misfire that should be avoided at all costs.