ROOM FOR RENT / CERT: UNRATED / SCREENPLAY: STUART FLACK / DIRECTOR: TOMMY STOVALL / STARRING: LIN SHAYE, OLIVER RAYÓN, VALESKA MILLER, RYAN OCHOA, LINDA CUSHMA / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
When sixty-something housewife Joyce Smith is widowed after decades in a loveless marriage, she discovers her husband has hidden the extent of their financial difficulties. Finding the silence of her now empty family nest becoming oppressive, and needing the money, she sets up a bed and breakfast business.
Joyce finds an immediate connection with her first guest, the open and warm-hearted Sarah (although her impossible boyfriend is insufferable). As transitory overnight guests provide little in the way of company, she opts instead to advertise for a long-term lodger. When the handsome and mysterious twenty-something Bob moves in, Joyce is delighted, but surprised to discover that his presence stirs long-dormant feelings within her that quickly prove difficult to contain.
There’s a long line of genre films that explore the destabilising impact that a new occupant or roommate can have on an existing home, especially one harbouring dark secrets. Most often, those films take the perspective of the new resident, who gradually uncovers the hidden horrors of their new abode and the true motives of their seemingly affable host.
Room for Rent is different in that it throws the spotlight on the homeowner and focuses not on the supernatural or ghostly backstory of the house, or the straight-out criminal intent of its owner, but on the corrosive impact on her of two powerful psychological factors: the re-emergence of appetites that Joyce’s previous life have left entirely unsatisfied, and the strain of unacknowledged grief.
Romantic infatuation and sexual lust are things so outside Joyce’s constricted life experience that she has no field of reference or mechanism for processing them. She is also painfully unaware of the reality of the huge age gap between her and the object of her affection, and has no grasp of appropriate personal behaviour or social cues. It’s a lack of self-awareness that makes for some fantastically awkward scenes, as Joyce makes clumsy pitches for her lodger’s attention. When her interest is rebuffed, she is consumed by jealousy towards Sarah with whom Bob strikes up a relationship.
Director Stovall creates a very effective sense of growing foreboding as Joyce’s self-control is overwhelmed by her fantasies. Scream-queen and horror franchise veteran Lin Shaye captures the frailty and frustrated rage of the unhinged Joyce with a great sense of relish; Oliver Rayón is effortlessly cool as the bad boy Bob; while Valeska Miller makes the questionable decisions of the good-natured but weak-willed Sarah seem almost plausible.
Stuart Flack’s script is not without its weak spots, but Room for Rent is an entertaining and unusual take on the unwelcome house guest premise, built around a truly unnerving and atypical lead protagonist, which would be worth watching on the strength of Shaye’s impassioned, emotionally-exposed performance alone.
