Untitled Home Invasion Romance

The Theater of Insecurity

There is a specific, often painful curiosity in watching a comedic actor step behind the camera. We look for the clown’s tears, or perhaps a desperate bid for gravitas. But in his directorial debut, *Untitled Home Invasion Romance*, Jason Biggs does something far more intelligent than simply pivoting to drama: he weaponizes his own history of portraying terminal awkwardness. This is not a vanity project; it is a film about the grotesque lengths a man will go to strictly to avoid the humiliation of being ordinary.

The premise suggests a screwball farce, but the execution leans into a chilly, suffocating noir. Kevin (Biggs) is an actor whose career has plateaued as the face of an erectile dysfunction medication—a humiliating public branding that serves as the film’s central metaphor. He is a man defined by a perceived lack of potency, both professional and romantic. In a misguided attempt to "rebrand" himself within his own crumbling marriage to Suzie (Meaghan Rath), he orchestrates a fake home invasion during a getaway to the Adirondacks. He intends to play the hero in a scripted drama of his own making, but reality, as it often does in the genre of the botched crime, refuses to follow the blocking.



Visually, Biggs and his cinematographer shun the bright, flat lighting of the studio comedies that made him famous. Instead, the film embraces the isolating vastness of the upstate wilderness. The cabin is not a cozy retreat but a stage set surrounded by an encroaching, indifferent darkness. The camera often lingers on Kevin’s face in moments of silence, stripping away the neurotic chatter we expect from Biggs, leaving only a desperate, calculating vanity. The silence is heavy, broken only by the sharp, shocking bursts of violence that occur when Kevin's hired "intruder," Ernie (Arturo Castro), enters the fray.

The film’s brilliance lies in its deconstruction of performative masculinity. Kevin doesn't want to *save* Suzie; he wants to be *seen* saving her. He is directing a play where he is the protagonist, oblivious to the fact that the other actors have real agency. This delusion shatters in the invasion sequence, which is staged not with the slick choreography of an action movie, but with the messy, clumsy panic of real life. When the plan spirals into actual bloodshed, the shift in tone is jarring—intentionally so. We are forced to confront the ugliness of Kevin’s ego; he has invited death into his home because he couldn't handle a bruised ego.



Meaghan Rath provides the film’s moral and emotional anchor. As Suzie, she is not merely the prize to be won but a sharp, intuitive observer who realizes—far sooner than Kevin expects—that the narrative doesn't add up. The scenes between them crackle with a dual layer of deception: the lies Kevin tells Suzie, and the lies they have both been telling themselves about their compatibility. The introduction of Anna Konkle as a suspicious local officer adds a layer of *Fargo*-esque tension, grounding the absurdity of Kevin's plot in the cold procedural reality of a murder investigation.



*Untitled Home Invasion Romance* is not without its rough edges; the tonal tightrope between satire and thriller occasionally wobbles in the third act. However, as a statement of intent, it is remarkably assured. Biggs has crafted a film that argues that the most dangerous intruder is not the stranger in a ski mask, but the insecurity rotting the foundation of the house from the inside. It is a dark, cynical, and surprisingly gripping examination of a man trying to script a fantasy because he cannot bear the reality of who he is.