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Just a week after the stupefying Home Makeover Nightmare, for which I was much too generous in my review, LMN’s latest ‘Home is Where the Harm Is’ offering is the even more stupefying The Guest Who Wouldn’t Leave … from the same writing team, so it all makes perfect sense.
The Guest Who Wouldn’t Leave starts with a murder of some blonde woman, but the Black Hoodie must have been at the dry cleaners because this killer wore a leather jacket and black baseball cap (maybe a mask too) and once the strangulation was complete, the killer skittered on out in a way that immediately set off all my alarms that this was a woman and not a man. But who was murdered? Put that out of your mind because even an hour into the movie you won’t know. That plot point only becomes important at the very end. It’s just one of the many maddening things in this movie. Cut to a month later, and tavern owner Tom (Alex Trumble) is about to open the guest quarters on his property — which was originally going to be a man cave or a playroom for his daughter Cora (Tenny Conroy) — as an Airbnb type of rental property instead. Tom is a single dad, his wife died two years earlier, and he’s trying to make ends meet because the tavern is apparently becoming a money pit. Luckily he has his sister Louise (Brittany Bennett) to help out with Cora, taking her back-and-forth to school and babysitting when he’s at work (unless she can’t when the plot dictates). Tom is excited for his first renter to check in, and when she does she’s practically draped in a red flag, completely not subtle about her attraction to Tom the second they meet. Elise (Molly Flanagan) comes in guns a-blazin’ and Tom is her target, especially when she accepts the amenities provided in the rental, like fresh flowers, are signs of romantic interest. This woman is unbalanced, and she clearly shows all of that on her face with her expressions, and when she asks for suggestions for good food delivery, Tom just invites her to dinner with him and Cora — mac and cheese, because it’s Cora’s favorite. She later discovers that of all the amenities provided in the rental, there are no plates. There is a kitchen hammer (and nails), but no dinnerware, so she also has to go and ask him for a plate. He gives her one so he is clearly in love with her.
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Instead of site-seeing, Elise spends all of her days at Tom’s tavern, or ‘bar’ as it says on the sign on the stock footage exterior of the building that is absolutely not connected to the interior, and is terribly offended that even though Tom is in love with her, still carries a torch for his sort-of ex Audrey (Lilith Mesidor). The mere mention of Audrey’s name causes Elise to wrinkle up her face in disgust, and she does all she can to convince him that Audrey is no good for him. As warning signs keep piling up around Elise, Tom just keeps focused on Cora, the tavern and winning Audrey back, and Audrey has made it clear that they are not a couple any longer, but they are friends, right? Even being friend-zoned still gives Tom hope. Elise is getting very close to Cora, offering to drive her to school when Louise is conveniently unavailable and Tom has to be at the tavern to wait for a repair person to arrive, and Cora is becoming attached to Elise … even though she also hopes daddy and Audrey get back together. While playing with Cora one day while Louise was unavailable and Tom was at work, Elise hid a pen among other writing utensils, and we later see it on the table. Turns out it is a listening device, and Elise is eavesdropping on every conversation without anyone knowing (and we then have to question how is she recharging the battery and did anyone ever discover the pen was a microphone?) and this contributes to her unbalanced behavior. Elise extends her stay with Tom, and she finally decides to try an actual alcoholic beverage at the tavern instead of her usual seltzer and lime. We have no idea how many drinks she’s had — and Tom really should have cut her off sooner — but she gets sloppy drunk and he has to drive her home, her desire for him now completely manifested openly, but Tom is a gentleman and tells her that it would be taking advantage of her in her current condition. She apologizes the next day, but she is going increasingly more mad either from Tom not accepting her advances or from the painting on the wall that keeps going crooked for no reason, giving her the opportunity to use that kitchen hammer — and nail — to make the picture stay put. Even with all of Elise’s behavior, Tom still grants her a second extension but she has to be out four days after her second week because new people are arriving. Audrey also reaches out to Tom to tell him some real estate deal she was working on went through so he invites her to dinner to celebrate … as friends, of course … and Elise is not happy to be left out in the cold. And out of the blue — perhaps because Louise told her brother that he and Audrey are a cute couple and all she wants is a commitment — Tom surprises Audrey with a ring and proposes. She seems hesitant but then just says of course she will! What? A day ago she didn’t even want to be in the same room with Tom, but one real estate deal and a dinner later and she’s engaged?! Well, this news does not sit will with you-know-who, and after attempting to make Tom jealous with the killer realtor from last week (Randy Jay Burrell), and then trashing his house, allegedly, it’s time for Elise to move on. But she conveniently trips over the carpet inside the front door and sprains her back. Luckily the EMT has done a full examination right there and it’s nothing serious but Elise does need to say in bed for at least one day, meaning Tom has to give her another extension … which he does verbally, and that apparently violates any rights he, as the rental owner, has on his own property, and now he can’t get rid of Elise without a legal battle, even though he has new guests arriving that day. Elise is now basically a squatter and has more rights to the property than the owner. This movie is just making me angry at this point. Now that she has Tom right where she wants him, by the b*lls, she sets out to make sure Audrey is no longer a hindrance to their future life together. Audrey lets Tom know that while she was at a coffee shop, a woman overheard her talking about the impending wedding and told Audrey that she was a wedding planner, and the woman is coming to her motel room … erm, apartment … to go over the plans for the wedding. It’s kismet! Except when ‘Sarah’ arrives, it’s Elise — spoiler alert — and she beats the crap out of Audrey with the leg of her now broken Ikea end table. (I recognized it immediately because I have the same table!) Tom is called to the hospital and told Audrey may not pull through, and while he’s holding vigil by her bedside, Detective Edwards (Ciarra Carter) calls and tells him that they have security footage from the coffee shop and perhaps he can identify who Audrey was talking to. He leaves and Elise immediately sneaks into Audrey’s room, not suspicious at all with her giant sunglasses, and tries to smother the unconscious Audrey with a pillow, but a nurse walks in just in the nick of time to stop her, and Elise flees. She nearly doesn’t make it back to the house because she’s pulled over for having a non-working tail light, and even though she is acting extra sketchy the cop lets her go … and she heads to the house, beats up Louise and snatches Cora, ‘locking’ her in a closet with sliding doors that have no lock, using a book to wedge between the doors to keep them closed (it should be noted that there are two doors, and while Elise was holding the one shut, Cora could have very easily opened the other door and escaped). And how exactly is a book going to stop the doors from opening? All Cora had to do was push at the bottom of the door, that wasn’t on a track, to create enough space to allow the book to drop. But Tom and Louise arrive, with Tom convincing Elise to let Cora go, which she does, but Elise then attacks Tom with his kitchen hammer, about to smash his skull before Louise runs in to stop her, the two ‘struggling’ on the floor just as Det. Edwards and the police arrive. Instead of trying to help, the detective stands there and tells the officers to stop Elise, and some guy well past retirement age drags Elise off of Louise while the other female officer and the detective watch. Louise, Tom and Cora hug it out, Det. Edwards informs them that Audrey is going to pull through, and the female cop comes back and whispers something in the detective’s ear, and they both leave. Six months later, all is well, Audrey is recovered, Tom’s rental is now a man cave, and Cora’s consolation prize for not having her playhouse is the bouncy house Tom had bought right before Elise arrived. They all bounce happily ever after. Oh, and that woman murdered at the beginning? The new girlfriend of Elise’s ex-boyfriend. Yes, Elise was the killer. Surprise.
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The Guest Who Wouldn’t Leave deserves every bit of snark I’ve given it as it is an insult to anyone who watches it, because it seems the writers and director don’t think their audience is intelligent enough to question everything in the story (and the actual stuff we can see on screen). I get the point of the opening murder, a month before the main story takes place, but when most of the movie goes by and you suddenly remember there was a murder that has not once been referenced, that’s a problem. Then you have to ask, is Elise just insane right from the start? I suppose she is if she’s been on the run after committing a murder, but we don’t know that. She just comes off as crazy and the fact that Tom never picks up on the crazy is troubling, and her dialogue is anything but subtle as she tries to convince Tom she is the woman for him, and totally ingratiates herself with Cora, which should also be troubling as she uses Cora’s and her own (allegedly) dead mother to bond them. Then there is the whole tenant-host rental agreement situation. It’s clear that Elise has booked the place for a week, which she extends to a second week, and then talks Tom into giving her four more days before his next renters arrive. So that would be about 18 days, plus the one extra he gives her after she pretends to hurt her back. That time frame does not afford her any rights, even in California, to stay on the property until officially and legally evicted. She had to have been there for more than a month to trigger a legal proceeding, and there is no indication of that. But it would certainly make anyone considering renting out their property to think twice. Then there is Audrey’s change in attitude from ‘we’re just friends, period’ to ‘of course I’ll marry you, you big dummy’ simply because Tom cooked her dinner and presented her with a ring. You’re not obligated to accept, girl, especially when you have reservations about the relationship already (despite Tom clinging to her like a puppy). And, again, we have one of the most ineffective law enforcement officials ever, serving Tom nothing but attitude after his house is trashed, seeming to think he may have done it, and then doing nothing to break up the fight between Elise and Louise (because she didn’t want to break a nail?). And then there are the location exteriors. Tom’s house seems plausible. The tavern, however, does not match the inside to the outside. The exterior is clearly adjoined to another building to the left, yet that left wall inside has windows! We’re not supposed to notice that? Audrey’s apartment building is clearly a motel, and when she opens her door, what we see outside the door does not match what we saw of the exterior of the building. Google Lens has become an invaluable tool when trying to figure out locations, and the exterior of the building is, in fact, a motel set for filming. But looking at the virtual tour of the location, The Villa Serena, there is an actual apartment building set opposite the hotel … so why not use that?!? (Tom’s tavern interior also appears to be part of the same location.) Is this just nitpicking? Maybe, but when the story and the acting are getting to the point that none of it makes any sense, you can’t help but to notice all the other things that don’t make sense. But, again, this is from the same people who created Home Makeover Nightmare — and I’m shocked it wasn’t the same director as well — with its ridiculously enormous home that forced people to walk outside and halfway down the driveway to go back into the sub-levels of the house. Moving forward, I will have to question if watching a movie by this team of people is going to be worth my time.
Things aren’t really helped by the cast, but I promise I won’t be (too) mean because you never know if the actors decided this is how their characters would behave, or if the writer/director suggested this is how they should behave. I normally enjoy Alex Trumble because he’s really good at playing the cad, the good guy who turns out to be the bad guy, or is just a villain right from the start. Yes, he does get to show a different side of himself as an actor here, softer, in dad-mode, but often too much of a puppy dog or pushover, actually the victim of this story. It doesn’t suit him, and he looks completely ill-at-ease in the scenes that force him to go into the bouncy house, first with Elise and Cora and then with Audrey and Cora. At the end, he looks so uncomfortable, basically just standing there while the others bounce, making it look like he’s also bouncing when he clearly is not.
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As for Molly Flanagan’s Elise … I’d love to know how she came up with her character’s portrayal. Did she have discussions with the director, or was it her choice to come in right at the start like a person who is mentally unbalanced? Her entire character, from her facial expressions to how she speaks and carries herself starts at 100 and never lets up. Everything about Elise is disingenuous, and for Tom to be written in such a way that he doesn’t see her intentions — from the second they met and how she eyed him up like dinner to a starving person — is really insulting to the audience. I’ve looked at Flanagan’s acting reel and she does have a nice range, both unbalanced and incredibly emotional characters, and she’s an accomplished opera singer to boot, but every choice that she and/or the director made for Elise was the wrong one. The character just lacks any subtlety, her infatuation with Tom is inexplicable as it never develops over the course of the story, it’s just there the minute she gets out of her car. And story-wise, we’re also left to question how she ended up there. Was it just happenstance (yes, she was on the run but we don’t know that) or did she target Tom when she booked the place? This role is just a disservice to her talent.
Tenny Conroy is good as Cora, playing the little girl with the appropriate amount of childlike trust. Brittany Bennett is also fine as Louise, a voice of reason for Tom without being nagging. Lilith Mesidor plays Audrey as a strong woman who doesn’t play with indecisive men, but her sudden acceptance of Tom’s out of left field proposal kind of undoes all of that, making it seem like she was just stringing him along until he popped the question, intentionally distancing herself from him to force him into committing. Ciarra Carter is one of those stereotypically annoying detectives who always believe the victim is the suspect, often reacting to whatever Tom tells her with a ‘hmm’, which is insulting and infuriating, but when she just stands there and does nothing to stop Elise from smashing Louise in the face with Tom’s kitchen hammer, she’s totally ineffectual (and again, this probably is more the script’s and director’s fault than a question of her talent). Adam Huss pops in as the lawyer Tom hires to deal with the Elise problem, and he is at least professional and not as condescending to Tom as Det. Edwards is. Kevin Scott Allen is barfly Eddie, always ready to offer commentary on Tom’s situation, and Randy Jay Burrell, the murderous realtor from Home Makeover Nightmare, has a cameo as a trick Elise picks up to try to make Tom jealous. At least he can see the woman is nuts. Joe Finfera and Avis Wrentmore also have a scene as the renters scheduled after Elise, and they behave nothing if not completely entitled with zero sympathy for the position Elise has put Tom in.
The Guest Who Wouldn’t Leave is just one bad decision after another in terms of its story, acting and production. It still doesn’t match the complete ineptitude of Deadly Desire — at least the sets aren’t made of cardboard — but it certainly gives it, and Home Makeover Nightmare, a run for their money. I can only recommend giving this a watch if you want to see how not to make a movie. The most interesting thing about this movie is the hilariously over-the-top AI artwork someone created and posted to the movie’s IMDb page, because it has nothing to do with the actual movie.
The Guest Who Wouldn’t Leave has a run time of 1 hour 30 minutes, and is rated TV-14.