Adrienne Shelly is even more down on her characters here than in Waitress - maybe she's punishing the stupid, unattractive romantic triangle of Meg Ryan, Timothy Hutton and Kristen Bell (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) deliberately - a sort of anti-infidelity film? Though if so she leaves the film's most repellant character, a violent burglar who's inches from adding rape and murder to his repertoire, completely scott free - maybe this is the character who killed her in real life, shaped post-script?
I don't know, but while watching it I remember seeing Michael Haneke's disturbing and controversial Funny Games (1997) one Sunday morning and found it a walk in the park in contrast - maybe because you know Haneke is telling us something (even though he's a notoriously opaque lesson-giver). So if my assumption about the underlying message is right, maybe all this needs is a Haneke, not Hines, whose only film this was and who was also in Shelly's Waitress.
Tough going though; the only 'humour' comes from a man being scotch-taped to a toilet (where he's repeatedly assaulted); at least it's mercifully short.
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