Movie Review: Model House (2024)

Synopsis: Five models with numerous Instagram followers are hired to pose in a swimwear photoshoot and are sharing a rental home for the duration. During the night, two intruders, one man and one woman, take the models hostage and try to exploit their popularity to make money from their followers. However, when things don't go quite as planned and a third, more violent, partner shows up, the models find their lives in danger.

Who's in it? The movie stars Scout Taylor-Compton, Cory Anne Roberts, Kyra Santoro, Natalie Nootenboom and Chris Zylka.

Review: My wife and I continued our movie marathon after a short break for me to pick up a carry-out food order from one of our local bars. Deciding to take a break from Hallmark films, I picked out Model House, which I came across on Starz a few days ago. While it wasn't what I was expecting it to be, it turned out to be a good choice.

The movie takes a while to get going, spending a lot of time on introducing the models as well as giving a fairly realistic take on what real models go through today, especially when it comes to gaining followers. This did make the early part of the movie drag a bit as a result but once it finally got going, there was enough action to keep it interesting.

I think the thing I liked most about this film was it was somewhat unpredictable. It wasn't hard to figure out who the final girl would be but between the intruders' infighting, the various opportunities the models had to gain the upper hand and the potential for ex-boyfriends and stalkers to show up at the door, there were quite a few surprises. It was also one of those movies where someone could get killed completely by accident.

My only real comment about the movie, and I don't really count this as a complaint, is I do think it might have been better as a slasher film with an unknown murderer. I only say that because there were times when it felt as though that was what the movie was originally going to be considering they set up a whole mess of potential suspects including the beforementioned ex-boyfriend, an angry neighbor and an estranged violent father. Not to mention the opening scene involving a model being killed, leading to a last-second substitution, set up the possibility of one of the models themselves being a killer. 

I'm not saying the whole intruder/hostage thing didn't work. I'm just saying this film might have been able to take things the other direction and been even better, especially since the plot they went with made some of the earlier set ups and backstories kind of pointless.

Final Opinion: It's a good movie with some intense scenes and unpredictable characters. While I'm not sure if the direction the filmmakers took was necessarily the right one, it did work.

My Grade: B