This leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth. It’s a remake of the psychosexual home invasion thriller Private Property, which starred Warren Oates – a cult classic that was out of circulation for decades after its release in 1960. (Memorably, Jackie Kennedy described it as an “awful, sordid thing”.) Depressingly, the new version seems to preserve its deeply misogynistic 1960s attitudes towards women. It’s a nasty pulpy film, in which the big question for the plot is whether a young woman is going be violently sexually assaulted and murdered at the end. Will-she-or-won’t-she? It’s a grim watch.
That woman is Kathryn (a woodenly pouty performance by Ashley Benson). She’s an aspiring actor married to a successful movie producer. While he’s at work, Kathryn spends her days cleaning their fancy home in the Hollywood Hills while wearing super-tight denim shorts. Then one day a new gardener replaces her usual guy. This is Duke (Shiloh Fernandez), who charms Kathryn by fixing stuff around the house. “I’m good at most physical stuff,” he says, wink wink. We are supposed to buy Duke’s seduction, but the sexual tension is Baltic.
What Kathryn doesn’t know is that Duke has targeted her, after spotting her at a petrol station. He’s got a sidekick, too – a twitchy guy called, in a little nod to the original movie, Oates (played by Logan Miller). And it’s Oates who can’t take his eyes off Kathryn. Duke is apparently more driven by class resentment to plot the violence that’s coming. What’s really blood-boiling here is that Kathryn’s safety radar is never triggered by the two scuzzy strangers she invites into her home, where she is completely alone. Director Chadd Harbold uses the jazzy technique of telling the story out of order to keep the plot moving. But nothing can resuscitate this nasty pulpy mess.