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Paola (Humberly González) is a pretty young woman about to turn 30 who hasn’t found herself a steady boyfriend – so, like many people of her generation, she’s on all the dating apps. The algorithm finds her match in Henry, who looks clean cut and kind eyed – or, at least, that’s what he seems from a very short video conversation on the phone, which breaks up due to bad signal. Paola’s sister Maria (Shaeane Jimenez) is visiting town because her and Paola’s father (Peter Butler) is going in for an operation, and warns her more trusting sibling not to accept Henry’s invitation to come to dinner at his house, away from the public gaze.
Of course, Paola should have listened to her sister. The good looking guy (played by Luke Volker) turns out to have been a catfishing lure, and the real Henry (Jacques Adriaanse) looks like what you’d get if a troll mated with a slime mould. Plus, it’s actually Henry’s deranged mother, Lucille (a fantastic Dianne Simpson) who’s been writing all those courtly messages to Paola – who is soon sedated with drugged wine and wakes up about to be raped, exactly the sort of scenario your actual mother warned you about.
Fortunately, it’s not all grim worst-nightmare-ever stuff, thanks to a slyly witty script credited to Al Kaplan and Jon Kaplan, directed with impish verve by Danishka Esterhazy. There are some very funny scenes, including a great two-hander between Lucille and another possible victim, Natalie (Nikita Faber), who hasn’t been completely honest about her own presentation online. The last stretch has lashings of practical effect gore to keep the genre fans happy, but it’s the sour social satire that lingers in the imagination afterwards.
English (US) ·