Safer At Home is a film about the COVID-19 pandemic. It was made in February 2021, so the majority of the production took place while the real-life pandemic was at its peak. This makes it interesting as we get a vantage point of real-life people in the midst of the outbreak on what they imagined the future would look like. 2020 was a pretty bleak year and there was a lot of uncertainty on what the next year would be like. The film gives us a pessimistic version of a COVID-future. Safer At Home is set in the future; 2022, to be exact, and is shot exclusively through a Zoom call between three couples who are having a virtual birthday, making the film very 2020-esque.

The film initially gave me Unfriended: Dark Web vibes. The 6 friends are in front of the computer screen reconnecting with one another via Zoom after being apart due to COVID. The film depicts a futuristic version of LA where the virus has devastated the world even more than it did in real life. LA becomes a police state following turmoil due to COVID-19. This gives the film additional stakes, which gives credence as to why the group is relegated to meeting virtually.

The strength of Safer At Home is in its first act. The beginning of the film is the high point, but it unfortunately loses itself as it progresses; completely unraveling by the end. The film does a nice job reeling you in as a technological thriller. The dynamic between the friends is interesting, but it’s obvious that at some point shit will go off the rails. Fortunately, the relationship chemistry between the members has enough charm to keep you invested to see where the plot goes.

As mentioned, tensions eventually arise. It’s kind of dumb how it gets to that point, however. The group play a virtual game of Never Have I Ever and one of the main characters gets upset at his long-term girlfriend over a 10-year-old transgression from high school. Maybe there’s a dude out there somewhere who will get upset at his girlfriend over something that happened in high school well before they knew each other, but it felt forced and improbable in this film. It was highly petty and unreasonable, to the point that the conflict felt contrived and inorganic.

At this point in the movie, my perception goes from quizzical to incredulous. There’s no way that these adults could function on the daily if these are the decisions that they make. The film is reliant on highly illogical decisions, making it fall completely off the rails. It becomes absolutely nonsensical in its third act.

The film is shot exclusively through a Zoom camera throughout, but it loses its footing as it transitions from a sociological COVID-piece to an action thriller. It makes sense to have the film played via Zoom if it’s the former, but it switches over into the later at its midpoint. The film is continuously shot via Zoom even in the midst of dramatic situations, which is head-scratching, because in real life, most rational people are not going to continue to hold a laptop to maintain a Zoom call in the midst of an emergency. Safer At Home disagrees.

The switch up from drama to thriller is clunky and it causes it to lose one of its positive aspects. The twist at the end is honestly a slap in the face. It was irrational and ridiculous and not worth the build-up.

Ultimately, Safer At Home is a hard miss. It has a promising start as a technological drama about relationship dynamics between friends as they virtually socialize during the COVID-19 pandemic. It regresses into an action-thriller that builds its plot off the back of flimsy storytelling and irrational decisions by the main characters. The plot is flimsy once you get past the midway mark. The twist at the end is eye-rolling at best and infuriating at worst. Safer At Home has a promising start that it completely loses by transitioning away from the solid film it began as.

-----4.0/10