Tiger House (2015)

The Worst Film Ever

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Excellent but underrated film

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Right from the get-go of the British crime thriller "Tiger House" we learn that this young lass (Kaya Scodelario, "The Maze Runner") is a competitive gymnast. And her character's athletic prowess is showcased in some scenes here certainly. Still, it never reaches the level of kick-ass ninja warrior stuff you fully anticipated considering the dire circumstances of this home invasion horror show.Tiger House......eh, more of a tabby shack.

A teenage couple spends a night at his place. The mother doesn't like the girl, Kelly, because she thinks her son has a future and Kelly only stacks shelves at a supermarket. The house is rather large and has cameras everywhere. Occasionally we see poor quality views of all 8 cameras on a screen. There we learn that 4 masked guys kill the dog and make their way into the house, just as Kelly lets her boyfriend know she's pregnant. The kid hears noises, leaves the room with a bat, a scuffle ensues and suddenly someone opens the door forcing Kelly to hide under the bed just in time. It's two bad guys. One of them, the brains of the operation, has a chunk of glass in his abdomen and is bleeding profusely. They put him on the bed while another guy monitors the radio.In the meantime two other bad guys have left, kidnapping the kid's father. They need him for their heist--it sounds like they may be robbing a bank. The bad guys learn that the mother is actually a dr so they get her to attend the injured guy for a bit. She discovers Kelly under the bed, but soon enough the mom and the kid are again gagged and bound in the main bedroom. At some point Kelly manages to escape the bedroom. Then some stranger knocks on the door and comes in, he is killed by the other bad guy who's sort of the dummy of the group. Kelly is discovered by the bad guys and hides in an attic. There she finds a bow and arrows that she'll have to use to escape the situation.What follows then is some back and forth between Kelly running and hiding from the guys--the injured guy is in real bad shape now--who have terrible peripheral vision. TAt this point the other two guys have returned now with the loot from their successful heist. There's a twist in the story and Kelly will have to become more proactive to get everyone out alive.Tiger House is pretty enjoyable for what it is. While it doesn't create nearly enough tension as when Kelly is hiding under the bed with a bad guy right on the bed, it's not entirely dull and boring as movies of these sort tend to be where the entire action takes place in a few rooms of a house. Once the bad guys show up they are the only ones doing the talking. One turn of events related to one of them is a bit too unlikely but the twist near the end was very enjoyable. It also helps that Scodelario is rather attractive.

Tense, well-crafted home invasion thriller that doesn't, in the end, add much to the genre and doesn't leave much of an impression once it's over. I appreciate that the screenplay by Simon Lewis reaches for some thematic resonance about characters at critical turning points in their lives without belaboring the points or becoming hackneyed, but the character development takes a back seat to the mechanics of a twisty plot that isn't as compelling as it should be. This film has both too much and too little going on. It could have been longer and I wonder if it fell victim to some overzealous pruning. Still, crisp direction by Tom Daley and a good performances all around make this an entertaining watch while it lasts. I just wish I wasn't already starting to forget that I saw it.

If you watch the movie, most of the plot holes are explained, (locked windows, the boyfriend takes the key from the lock to stop the girl leaving early on in the film, the mother does scream when untied but her lover is lying on the floor with his head a bloody pulp from a baseball bat!) I could go on closing the holes, but suffice to say, It's not a great film, but I have seen a lot, lot worse. The cast is good and acting OK, but it is a story told many times before and in many cases better. I think it is a vehicle for some up and coming stars Kaya Scodelario and Ed Skrein to put on their CV as both are now in big budget Hollywood movies, Maze Runner and Transporter:Refueled respectively. GT