Weekend Healer

Constantly bickering and seemingly at a breaking point in their two-and-a-half-year relationship Mark (David Ryan Kinsman) and Katie (Liberty Hills) embark on a weekend getaway to a house in the country. After the first night, their woes are compounded by the unexpected arrival of Rob (Nick Pages-Oliver), the son of the house owner, of whom Mark is incredibly suspicious.

From the off Mark and Katie are at each other’s throats. On the car journey up to the house, Mark suggests that they play a ‘game’ where they pick out an issue that one has with the other, a fault, and ask them to think about fixing it. Of course this is a bare-faced, targeted attack on Katie, which many would say she takes well, considering. Though Mark isn’t the only aggressor, as once they arrive Katie expects him to make dinner, and then chastises him for only making a salad as he is trying out a new diet, a fad, but admittedly still his choice. David Ryan Kinsman and Liberty Hills do well to sell themselves as characters who may even be normal, likable people outside of this relationship, but instead are trapped in an interlocking death grip neither one knows how to get out of.

And then Rob enters the fray. Nick Pages-Oliver stars as the butter-wouldn’t-melt, deviously innocent intruder in this bitterly entrenched war. A beautifully abrasive character who seems polite and giving, but always does exactly the right thing to make things worse. With Rob now involved Mark becomes conflictingly jealous and possessive over Katie even as he pushes her away. In turn, she strikes up a friendship with Rob and uses it to create an advantage over Mark. The question becomes how long till someone snaps?

Tightly scripted with wall-to-wall dialogue, except maybe for those cringe-inducing awkward silences, every conversation in Weekend Healer is loaded with tension. They take everyday mundane social conventions, say leaving a dinner party, and dial it in to the most excruciating point, where one person is made to look rude and offensive. And then repeat, again and again. One question that plays on the mind throughout is: is this a horror movie? A couple take a trip to a secluded house in the woods, only to find themselves living with a stranger, who seems to be driving them further apart? And what if the whole time they made exclusively the wrong decisions? It sure feels like horror.

Weekend Healer is a tense and exhausting affair. It relentlessly threatens to boil over for the full seventy-six-minute run time. An indie feature surely made to please fans of the infamous Dinner Party episode of The Office (US).