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LMN’s ‘Home is Where the Harm Is’ theme continues with a supposed mystery-thriller set in a ridiculously large house that absolutely needs no home makeover, with the slimmest of plotlines that is completely undone by the final scene … which we will have to reveal so beware of a ‘major’ spoiler ahead.
Home Makeover Nightmare (aka Nightmare Home Makeover, depending on the source) begins with a woman in that ridiculously large house, white from top to bottom inside and out, immaculate, spotless and sparsely decorated as if no one actually lives there, and much (much!) too large for the single resident (or even a family of four) preparing a cup of tea when she hears a noise in the vast chasm of her home. While she goes to find the source of the noise, LMN’s Black Hoodie villain enters the kitchen and begins emptying the woman’s medication (heart medication we later learn) into her tea, one capsule at a time. The man slips out, and we can clearly see his stubbly face, so when he shows up later there is no mystery as to who was in the Black Hoodie. The woman returns, pops one of her pills as prescribed, and enjoys that tea more than I’ve seen anyone enjoy a cup of tea. Then I guess she went to bed, because after she is found dead, one of her daughters mentions she died in her sleep. Either she laid down on the floor for a nap or it took a really long time for her to overdose, but the official cause of death was heart attack. A second daughter, marine biologist (not that that has anything to do with the plot except it allows her to take an extended leave) Dayna, lives five hours away in San Francisco but returns home to be with her sister, KD, and sort out their mother’s affairs. At the funeral, we also meet mom’s bestie, Detective Vicki R. Phillips (top billed, but barely seen, Jackée Harry) and some guy hanging around behind KD who looks like Tom Sandoval and says nothing until they all exit the scene. Oh, it was Tom Sandoval playing KD’s significant other, Billy. KD and Billy had a vacation scheduled so Dayna offers to stay at the house and get things sorted because, of course, they plan to sell the monstrous compound, and while she is sunbathing the next day a man appears out of nowhere to offer his condolences, and it turns out to be Mikey Donovan, someone whom Dayna knew from high school but was never friends with. Weird but … Mikey is also a real estate agent (she apparently could not tell by his suit which he motions to as if it were a uniform), and he offers to help Dayna get the house ready to go on the market, promising her to get the best price possible. What a wonderful coincidence that this guy with a stubbly face shows up out of the blue like that. Could he be …?
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Mike quickly gets to work telling Dayna everything that’s wrong with the museum-quality mansion, and offers to pay for the makeover in exchange for a cut of the profit. Dayna is on board with that and talks KD into going along … even though Billy has some reservations. The first thing Mikey does is hire an inspector to give the place a once-over and he comes back with bad news — all the wiring in this gigantic modern home is not up to code and it will all have to be replaced. Yikes! But Mike assures Dayna he’s got it covered. Also, the inspector is a pal of Mike’s so he really didn’t do an inspection even though he is apparently a real inspector, so he has zero ethics. While Dayna is out one day, nosey neighbor Mrs. Blaylock starts snooping around and encounters Mike, who is not happy to see her there, especially after she tells him that Mrs. Brooks did not want to sell the house but keep it in the family, and he changes his tune and tells the woman that her friend left her an antique lamp, which they can retrieve from the basement … which requires them to exit the house, walk a little ways outside to go back into another part of the house with really low ceilings — and if I was Mrs. Blaylock I would have told this creepy guy I’d wait outside — down more stairs, and they end up in another weird room, but Mrs. Blaylock does not get a lamp, she gets dead. Mike and Dayna’s personal relationship begins to heat up — they kiss! — but there is another problem with the water pump to the house. Dayna is starting to see money being flushed down the drain but Mike’s got you, boo. One day, Mike encounters a man outside the house who wants to speak to the owner. Brett Taylor is also a realtor, but Mike tells him the house is not for sale and nothing he can say will convince the owner to part with her childhood home. Brett is adamant, but he leaves, promising he will return. And return he does as he deduces that there is something fishy with Mike, who then entertains the notion of selling and wants to show Brett a special room … which requires them to take the same journey to the sub-sub-basement as Mike did with Mrs. Blaylock … and Brett meets the same fate. (We never know what Mike does with the bodies, but he did apparently lug Mrs. Blaylock back to her house, touched everything, and staged it so it appeared she fell down the stairs and broke her neck, while Brett’s body is never recovered.) Then Brett’s wife Claire shows up handing out flyers and runs into Dayna, who asks if the woman has called the police — and is met with the appropriate ‘Of course I have’ response accompanied by an eye roll. Claire tracked her husband to this neighborhood, and Dayna offers to ask her police contact to see if she can get something moving on the case.
KD and Billy return from Cabo, and Dayna and Mike’s personal relationship is developing further, but the other two just don’t think things are right, and KD wants the house listed for sale ASAP. Mikey gets very upset when Dayna asks him to list the house because they will lose money with all the repairs needed, storming out in a huff, and then later showing her the listing on his phone. Dayna tells KD about the listing but KD can’t find it anywhere online, and Mike tells Dayna it’s listed on an exclusive site for buyers who will pay top dollar so stop bugging him about it! Dayna checks in with Det. Vicki, who assures her that after 48 hours they can open an investigation into Brett Taylor’s disappearance but one of her best detectives is on the case, and Dayna also is cagey about her relationship with her ‘old high school flame’, as Det. Vicki keeps calling him (they knew each other but he was too much of a dork for Dayna to be interested in him in school, but now he’s a hunk she can’t resist). Det. Vicki discovers something shocking about Mike, whom she does not even know is also the supposed realtor helping Dayna with the house: his parents were the previous owners of the house! Dayna is shocked to learn this news, and when she confronts Mike, now wearing his Black Hoodie, about everything he melts down and tells her that it was his childhood home but the bank foreclosed on them and then the Brooks family bought it, so he’s apparently been planning this whole scheme for years in an effort to take back what he believes is rightfully his and he’s not going to let Dayna take it from him again. Why he waited until this moment to kill Mrs. Brooks is unknown. So he ties Dayna up and puts her in the murder room. KD and Billy show up, and Billy just has to go check out the mysterious basement that he was going to check out before when he offered to help Mike with the plumbing problems but Mike deflected that situation and Billy always thought it was suspicious. He goes in and passes through a room that appears to have a massage table in it for some reason, Dayna struggles to get the gag out of her mouth, and confusion ensues because Mike was with Dayna and heard KD and Billy, so he goes outside to intercept them. But he exits from the upper part of the house, while Billy is now apparently lost in the labyrinth of the upper basement, and Mike tells KD she can’t go in the house because he just primed the walls and the smell is toxic … but he’s used to it. (And he’s really good at his job because there is nary a fleck of paint on him or his Black Hoodie). After a comically long time, Dayna finally gets the gag out and screams, alerting KD who runs toward the sound in the basement, running down several flights of stairs, instantly finding her sister while Billy is who knows where. Mikey just chuckles, then follows KD, slow clapping as he enters the room. Apparently Billy just stayed in the upper part of the lower part of the house, and when he hears a commotion below, he also heads down those flights of stairs, surprising Mikey from behind, allowing Dayna to get free while KD delivers a punch in the gut to Mikey, knocking him down, but he crab walks out of the room and then dashes out the door.
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Dayna, KD and Billy converge on Det. Vicki’s office, and she tells them that while the investigation into Mike Donovan has just started, there is a good chance he killed neighbor Mrs. Blaylock and the missing Brett Taylor. But what about their mom? Well, Det. Vicki had ordered a full toxicology report and only discovered her prescription medicine in her system, and even though it was a high amount it didn’t seem suspicious at the time, perhaps she had just forgotten how much she had taken. Now, however, it seems there is a good chance Mike somehow administered the high dose to her. They also determined that Mike did kill Mrs. Blaylock because his prints were all over her house, but they never checked before because an old woman falling down the stairs is an all-too-common occurrence apparently (although there is no explanation as to why Mike would have touched everything in her house after staging her accident), but Det. Vicki assures them that Mike will be found so they have nothing to worry about. Dayna decides she’s going to stay for a while, needing a vacation from her vacation. Plus they still need to sell the house, apparently unaware that mom did not want them to do so (apparently there has been no reading of a will at this point, or there was no mention of keeping the house in the family, which the mother surely would have mentioned to her daughters). One thing Dayna is sure about is that while Mike Donovan is crazy, he’s not stupid and he’s not going to show his face at their house again. But where is he? Somewhere in Los Angeles, going through real estate listings online for another fabulous mansion to target, giving us a look right into the camera that the Mike Donovan story is not yet finished. Which completely undoes the entire reason for this movie’s existence, because the whole plot hinged on Dayna’s house being his former house. Did he just enjoy his taste of real estate fraud and wants to give it another try? We’ll never know … or will we?
Home Makeover Nightmare comes from a story by Jeffrey Schenck and Peter Sullivan (Eat, Pray Lie.), with a screenplay by Adam Rockoff (also Eat, Pray, Lie. and several The Wrong… movies), and direction from David DeCoteau, perpetrator of the entire The Wrong… movie series with Vivica A. Fox as his co-conspirator. The story is just deadly dull, with zero suspense as Mike is revealed — either on purpose or just by some careless staging — as the culprit in the very first scene, and there are no other suspects for the audience to be concerned about. Instead we’re left to wonder how damn long it’s going to take for Dayna to catch on that Mike is a snake. It just drags on and there isn’t even anything remotely, unintentionally humorous to hold your interest … although there is some humor for viewers of those The Wrong… movies when you realize the police department is the same building exterior seen in all of those movies as various operations, and Det. Vicki’s ‘new office’ is the same exact, bizarrely black-walled office Ms. Vivica A. Fox occupies in said movies, still lit from below making everyone look like they’re telling ghost stories at camp with flashlights under their chins. By the end of the movie, though, you have to wonder exactly what the point was of it all. Had they dropped the whole ‘this was my family home and your family took it from us’ plot point, the ending would have at least made a little more sense, but the whole thing with Mike just slinking away while Dayna, KD and Billy huddle in the sub-sub-basement room is just as ridiculous as that ginormous house. Equally ridiculous is the fact that, like Ms. Fox, Ms. Harry gets top billing in the opening credits, while Sandoval gets second billing! The actual stars of the movie are third and fourth billed, yet they have the most screen time. Harry isn’t even an executive producer, as Fox is on her films, so she should have been afforded a just as prestigious ‘and’ credit instead of a starring one. But perhaps DeCoteau is going to use this to launch a whole series of Det. Vicki movies with Harry to alternate with his movies with Fox (the two actresses have even appeared together in DeCoteau’s The Wrong Marriage and The Christmas Campaign). Even though the story is a waste of time, there are still enough odd things about this movie to think about.
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The cast works hard — mostly — to make the dullness of the story seem interesting. Star Chelsea Rose Cook makes for an engaging heroine, even if she is a bit too trusting and easily misled. She at least makes Dayna charming and endearing enough for the audience to want to shake her and get her to realize that the outwardly suss Mikey is up to no good. I know that Cook can turn in a great performance, as she did in Kidnapped in a Small Town, but this, East, Pray, Lie. and The Christmas Campaign do not give her a real character to sink her teeth into. Randy Jay Burrell does a decent job of making Mike sincere in his insincerity, sometimes unable to hide the fact that he’s talking in such a way that should make Dayna question his motivations, while seeming completely on the up-and-up at other times. He can also give a perfectly sinister glare when needed. Savoy Bailey also gives a fine performance as KD, often the voice of reason Dayna chooses to ignore because she’s smitten with Mike. Tom Sandoval exists, delivering his mercilessly few lines with little hint of emotion. The movie could have used more Jackée Harry because she really could have camped things up a bit (these movie really take themselves too seriously). But she does deliver her dialogue with a feeling that this woman knows what she’s talking about, even if she is behind a desk for two of her three scenes. Harry gives Det. Vicki a sense of authority, so she succeeds in the role and it wouldn’t be terrible if she were able to reprise it in future movies, making her into a sort-of Jessica Fletcher character, maybe retired from the force at this point in her life and working as a Private Investigator.
Oddly enough, it’s the minor cast of characters who give more compelling performances, perhaps because they have less screen time. Eliza Roberts doesn’t have much to do but skulk around the house and die. Jon Briddell gets to bring some life to his realtor character, Brett, not afraid to confront Mike but also falling too easily for his plot to take a look at the basement. Diane Robin actually brings some deep emotional pain to the role of Claire, Brett’s distraught wife, allowing the viewer to feel some real sympathy for her plight. Robert Brian Wilson shows that his home inspector character, Blake, has no morals. Jensen Atwood and Alana Walker have a scene as a couple who apparently used Mike’s realtor services two years earlier to buy their own house — yes, Mike was a realtor for real at some point but his license was suspended — and once Dayna lets slip he’s helping sell her mother’s house, they want to get some friends of theirs an appointment to see the house. At the point these two show up, you almost wonder if, like the home inspector, they are Mike’s paid performers to convince Dayna he’s legit.
I won’t say that Home Makeover Nightmare is the worst LMN movie I’ve ever seen, but despite some game actors doing their best to make it interesting, it’s all undone by a ridiculous plot twist at the end that leaves you to wonder why you gave up your time to watch the movie.
Home Makeover Nightmare has a run time of 1 hour 30 minutes, and is rated TV-14.
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