Steve is a businessman who decides the way to fix his money problems is fire Mark and take his bonus. When Steve tells his wife Wendy about it, she wonders if Mark will be ok. Steve assures her he’ll be fine and says she can buy a new car. These are our protagonists and we already hate them.
Cut to a year later and Wendy is being stalked. When she sees someone in the yard at night, she pulls a gun and shoots him without saying a word. She just flat out murdered a meter reader. The couple never check to see if he may be alive or try to get him help.
Since she doesn’t want to go to jail, the family flees to their lake house, making them even more unlikeable. For a woman being stalked, they aren’t very careful. The stalker calls right after the murder so he is obviously watching them. Yet they drive directly from their house to their cabin.
Steve and Wendy are cavalier about things which would be alarming if you were being stalked. When their son says someone was following him in the woods, they tell him he imagined it. A cop shows up asking about her son Hayden’s friend, and Hayden says his Mom wouldn’t call the cops since she didn’t expect him back for another day. But Wendy says let the cop do his job. Or she and Steve come home and can’t find the boys, but never consider the stalker may have upped his game.
The filmmaker has done the actress playing Wendy a real disservice. There is nothing wrong with how she looks. Yet there is also no reason every male character who sees her, or hears her voice, should immediately want her. Is she gorgeous, fit, charming, engaging, flirtatious? No to all of the above. She looks like anyone you would see at work or in the supermarket. Nothing wrong with her, but everyone acts as if shes a model. They all think she’s so hot - her sons friends, the pizza guy, the cable guy, the stalker. The cable guy became enthralled just by hearing her voice. Once he sees her photo, there are some awkward moments where he forgets what he’s doing and just stands there staring at it. I think the only male character she interacted with who didn’t immediately want her was the guy who took the pizza order over the phone.
So many nonsensical things about this one:
- Steve and Wendy are crappy parents. When they wonder why their son went upstairs early, they send the other kid to find out. You’re the parents. You go check on him.
- Hayden jumped out a second story window to go to a party, yet only needs a boost from a friend to get back in.
- After the murder, Wendy says they can’t call the police because the stalker told her he’d kill her sons. Yet she already called the police earlier that day asking for help.
- The cable guy installs the cable the same day she calls.
- As soon as the guy who takes Wendy’s order hangs up the phone and asks for a delivery drives, the pizza guy grabs two pizza’s sitting on the counter and runs out to deliver them. Do they cook pizza’s in advance in case someone orders? Do they only have one type of pizza? How did he know she wanted two? The only info communicated was they need a driver for her address.
- Why has the no one ever considered Mark could be the stalker?
- How does Wendy stop Mark with a jackknife?
- Why does the family dispose of the stalkers body rather than calling the police?
- In the scene after the credits, why does Steve have no peripheral vision?
- Whose body is in the trunk? I thought they left the meter reader in the yard, packed their bags and headed to the lake. They talk about using the lake house as an alibi, which I’m not sure why they’d need if they didn’t leave the meter reader in the yard. If the body was actually the meter reader, then the dialogue was not clear.
- Where does Steve work that getting rid of an employee entitles him to that employees bonus?
Ridiculous Dialogue
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| Wendy looks like anyone you might see on the street. Yet every man who sees or talks to her is spell bound. |
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