Sweet Home

Sweet Home follows a young real-estate broker (Ingrid García Jonsson’s Alicia) as she plans a romantic evening with her boyfriend (Bruno Sevilla’s Simon) inside an almost-deserted apartment building, with terror and carnage ensuing after said building is invaded by assassins hired to kill the last remaining tenant (which would, in turn, allow the property to be remodeled and resold). It’s a decent premise that’s employed to mostly underwhelming effect by filmmaker Rafa Martínez, as the director delivers an erratically-paced narrative that’s compounded by a somewhat grungy visual sensibility and an ongoing lack of engrossing sequences. (And it doesn’t help, certainly, that Martínez, Ángel Agudo, and Teresa de Rosendo’s script is brimming with logic-defying, eye-rollingly silly elements.) Jonsson’s tough, believable performance is, as a result, slowly-but-surely rendered moot by the picture’s pervasively uninvolving atmosphere, while the fairly ludicrous climax ensures that the whole thing ends on a palpably forgettable note – which is a shame, ultimately, given that the premise does seem to possess a rather foolproof sort of vibe.

*1/2 out of ****