After famous model Bella Baylor (Zombeavers’ Lexi Atkins) is mowed down by a car, new and naive model Zoe (Cory Anne Roberts) is called into replacement duty on a bikini shoot. Part of that entails rooming with her fellow tanned-and-toned mannequins in a rented home which gives this film its double-meaning title of Model House.
Their first night may prove to be the end of their days, as the pad is invaded by gun-totaling criminals in comedy and tragedy masks. The felons (Scout Taylor-Compton and Piranha 3DD’s Chris Zylka) demand the models swindle social-media followers out of a million bucks by posting a donation link to the Bella Baylor Family Foundation — a nonexistent charity that’s actually an offshore account. Do it for the ’gram.
With Model House, music video veteran Derek Pike follows up his directorial debut, the inauspicious made-for-Lifetime Kidnapping in the Grand Canyon, with something in no danger of airing on that women-centric cable channel. Not when the models, save Zoe, are so transparently portrayed as intellectually vapid; one is all into OnlyFans, while the most insufferable has named her breasts Kylie and Kendall … and can’t wait to show them.
Recently seen trespassing across another suburban threshold in A Creature Was Stirring, Taylor-Compton may be top-billed, but Model House’s blueprint showcases Roberts (an actual contestant on TV’s America’s Next Top Model) in her first movie role. While competent, she and the others are helpless to keep the whole thing from being stolen by Randy Wayne (Hellraiser: Judgment), also one of the producers, in an amusing recurring bit as an in-denial ex.
Although slickly made, the movie isn’t successful. Pike’s own script fails him by going serious after a casually comedic, playfully self-aware setup suggesting a twist on the Slumber Party Massacre template. What follows is not that, but paint-by-numbers content nearly as tedious as the influencers it depicts. Pike shot this modestly budgeted thriller in the cost-effective environs of Oklahoma City. That the Sooner State capital is passed off as Los Angeles is hysterical, considering how only about four people dot the street. If you’re willing to buy that, perhaps you’ll swallow the rest? —Rod Lott