This cheeky suburban black comedy-horror confection builds from a slow start to a delicious finish, making up for what it lacks in subtlety with a whopping dose of impish delight. Janet (Francesca Eastwood, the daughter of Clint Eastwood and Frances Fisher), at first looks every inch the bland, cold trophy wife, living in a sterile show home where she doesn’t do much apart from exercise and work on maintaining her immaculate appearance. Occasionally her best friend, Tasha (Olivia Culpo, hilarious), drops by with her otherwise entirely ignored kid in tow for a yoga session or a spot of knife-throwing, the latter practised as casually as if it were ceramics or flower arranging.
One day, sinister contractor Leo (Milo Gibson, son of Mel Gibson) arrives, along with his entirely gorm-free sidekick Samuel (Oliver Cooper), and announces he has been paid by Janet’s absent husband to install a clawfoot bathtub in the master bedroom’s en suite. Unaware that this was planned, Janet is nonplussed, and also annoyed because she’s perfectly happy with the existing bathtub. Furthermore, Leo seems simultaneously inept, lazy, overfamiliar and creepy and she gradually starts to suspect that all is not quite right.
To reveal more would spoil a good last-third twist that morphs from suspense to high-camp comedy drenched in gore. Let’s just say there’s more going on behind Janet’s glossy veneer of sang-froid than you might initially think. Eastwood’s deadpan expression, the one thing that strongly recalls her father as an actor, is a secret weapon here, along with Culpo’s snippy timing, which does justice to screenwriter April Wolfe’s chucklesome one-liners.
• Clawfoot is on digital platforms from 23 September.
