Main cast: Madison Pettis (Hannah), Vanessa Morgan (Lexi), Jedidiah Goodacre (Drew), Phoebe Miu (Kayla), Jordan Buhat (Devon), Richard Harmon (Clay), Susan Bennett (Margaux), Brittany Mitchell (Martha), and Lochlyn Munro (William)
Director: Steven C Miller
Margaux is the name of an AI that controls a large, lavish smart home that is rented by a bunch of kids to celebrate one last get-together before their graduation.
As par for the course in this kind of movies, having an AI in full control is never a good idea. Sure enough, things get out of hand as Margaux has its own ideas on what good housekeeping stands for, and soon it is taking out the trash—our house guests—in style.
Oh, and I hope people aren’t watching this for Lochlyn Munro. Arguably the biggest star among the cast, he and Brittany Mitchell are here to be killed off in the opening scene. His character William goes straight out of the pool onto the massage chair, which is just horrible as I can only imagine the wet mess he would leave for the next person wanting to use the chair, so yes, he certainly deserves the gory death he gets.
Back to the college kids, there are Hannah the smart and workaholic one, Lexi the spoiled and self-absorbed influencer, pretty-faced jock Drew, stoner Clay, as well as Devon and Kayla that are always having sex without ever taking off their underwear. Based on this list of clichés, it’s really not hard to correctly guess which one of these bunch will live long enough to turn the lights off before leaving the house.
Plus, this person doesn’t do social media, which already makes them a superior human being compared to the others. In fact, this proves to be a life-saver, as Margaux uses the content of the others’ social media to profile them, understand them, and kill them off in the most appropriate manner befitting their online personalities and activities!
The problem with this movie, though, is that it takes almost an hour for the real action to start. There is a false start early on, which only seals the fates of these characters because they decide to stay in the place anyway after seeing what seems to be a pool cleaner going haywire and almost drowning Lexi.
Aside from that, the bulk of the movie up to nearly the one hour mark is about teen antics. These characters are all stereotypes with barely any personality, so I’m not sure why the people behind this movie would think I’d be so riveted by their conversations and various partying antics. There isn’t much comedy to be had, and there isn’t much exciting drama either.
I suppose the pretty cast members parading around in swim suits may be nice eye candy, but seriously, this movie needs to give me a better reason to care about these characters.
Even once the going gets good, the movie is more intent on misleading me with Final Destination-like set ups that ultimately just become distractions. There are some good scenes here, but given how most of them just peter out for cheap gotchas or laughs, the whole thing feels like a series of anticlimactic payoffs. I suspect this is because I am bored enough up to that point to want to see these boring characters killed off so that I can be entertained and the movie can end after, but no, even the more action-heavy second act feels like one overlong tease.
Perhaps had this one been trimmed down to half its length with a heavier focus on AI gone wild, it would have been a far more entertaining watch. In its current form, it’s more like 85% filler and 15% actually thrilling moments. Even that, that 15% has its share of hits and misses.
