Nick Tomnay’s debut feature, The Perfect Host, fits into the subgenre of two-person mystery-thrillers like Sleuth and Deathtrap, and while it’s nowhere near as good as either of those, the writer-director does make good use of his limited set and characters, and keeps introducing new surprises. Clayne Crawford plays a bank robber who’s slinking through the suburbs of Los Angeles, looking for a place to lay low, when he comes across the home of dapper aesthete David Hyde Pierce. Crawford swipes some of Pierce’s mail so he can make up a story and con his way inside, but before long, he realizes Pierce is more than a little nuts. Over the next hour or so of screen-time, the two men trade lies—and later threats—until it’s impossible to say who’s really in control of the situation.
