House of Darkness

House of Darkness (2022) is Neil LaBute's slow-burn thriller, ready to watch online on iFILM. After a few drinks at a bar, Hap offers a charming stranger a ride home and gladly accepts her invitation inside.

The estate sits far from anywhere, his host keeps changing the subject, and Hap is sure he already knows how the night ends. Justin Long and Kate Bosworth spend most of the film simply talking — flirting, drinking, trading barbs — while the rooms grow heavier with every line. The longer the seduction drags on, the clearer it gets that the roles of hunter and prey were cast before he arrived.

LaBute, a writer who loves a poisoned conversation, runs this almost as a two-hander stage play and steers it somewhere genuinely nasty. The ending flips the board and punishes the man's arrogance. Talky, mean and sharper than it lets on. Stream House of Darkness (2022) online on iFILM.