Roost review: strong performances dragged down by shaky direction

Amy Redford’s Roost, which premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival boasts a gaggle of strong performances spearheaded by Grace Van Dien, but the shaky direction and a clunky script bog down this family thriller.

For the first time in its full-theatre glory post-pandemic, the Toronto International Film Festival returned to King Street in Toronto for 11 days: bringing with it an endless onslaught of stars, buzzy titles,  soon-to-be Oscar winners, and plenty of duds in between. Premiering on the 15th just before the closing nights of TIFF was Amy Redford’s Roost, a chilly, tense family drama starring Summer Phoenix and Stranger Things‘ Grace Van Dien. Though Van Dien gives a raw, spirited performance that breathes life into weak writing, Roost‘s strangely stiff script and aimless direction from Redford result in a middling drama that doesn’t come anywhere near realizing the promise of its admittedly intriguing premise.

Roost follows young Anna (Van Dien), a 16-year-old  Emily Dickinson-loving teen with an eclectic wardrobe and a close bond with her mother Beth (Phoenix). Anna’s head over heels for an older man she met online, Eric (Kyle Gallner) despite having never met him in person – which changes when he shows up unexpectedly at her house on her 17th birthday. Though initially wary of the grand gesture, Anna is quickly charmed by Eric in-person as well as online, but while she may be smitten, Beth is shaken by “Eric’s” sudden appearance – and the more we begin to learn about Eric, the more we begin to question his motives, and the nature of his relationship with both Anna and Beth.

What’s immediately clear about Roost is the particular type of film it sets out to be – a thoroughly modern thriller that takes a new, internet-oriented approach to a familiar story. In that aspect, it’s successful – from the opening titles done via iMessage to Anna’s texting lingo, the film does a good job of establishing itself as a drama set squarely in the online realm, but without coming off as out-of-touch or preachy. The first act overall is generally successful in establishing both tone and character dynamics – Anna is an offbeat but whip-smart teen. Though Beth may not be her closest confidant, it’s. clear the two have a strong bond that functions well as the emotional undercurrent throughout the entire film.

Where things start to go wrong, though (both in and outside the narrative of the film) is with the in-person introduction of Eric – a 28-year-old lacking the charm and charisma to function as a pseudo-Ted Bundy, but also not *quite* suspicious or intimidating enough to play out the ‘creepy guy you met online’ angle either. Instead, Eric spends his first half an hour of screen time awkwardly navigating his first few meetings with Anna, but fundamentally lacking any kind of intrigue that might make us suspicious or interested in his character as the film seems to hope we will be.

It’s frustrating how tepid Eric is as a character – though some of it can certainly be chalked up to him not wanting to spook his 17-year-old paramour, his speech patterns, posture, and even body language are so thoroughly tepid it’s hard to establish a bond to his character or form any strong opinions (good or bad) about his relationship with Anna. Is it strange that he’s so much older and that he showed up unannounced? Absolutely. But despite her initial surprise and suspicion, Anna glosses over the intrusion rather quickly, and instead of emphasizing that fact, the film seems content to similarly brush past any interesting questions surrounding his dynamic with Anna.

Instead, once the film hits about the halfway mark, the focus shifts (in an almost jarring 180) from a story about Anna and Eric with Beth as an outside observer to a story about Beth and Eric, nearly forgetting Anna entirely in favor of unpacking Beth and Eric’s complicated dynamic. To the film’s credit, the twist regarding Beth and Eric’s preexisting relationship is certainly interesting and injects some much-needed life into the slow burn as it heads into the last act. Where the trouble comes, though, is that Beth has been a minor character until this point, and when you spend the first half of the film developing one character to suddenly drop them and switch gears to focus on another, it leaves both mother and daughter feeling underserved and underwritten.

To the cast’s credit, the performances are without question the film’s strongest suit – and though Summer Phoenix, Kyler Gallner, and Jesse Garcia are all strong, it’s Grace Van Dien who steals the show – despite the fact that her character is almost entirely written out of the film’s last act. Though it may sound like an exaggeration, it really is strange how Anna disappears from the narrative entirely once the nature of Beth and Eric’s pre-existing relationship is revealed, which is a shame, because Van Dien delivers the film’s strongest performance, more than making the most of a lackluster script.

As Anna, Van Dien projects the kind of youthful innocence familiar in teen coming-of-age narratives but mixed with paradoxical wisdom beyond her years that helps sell her sisterly bond with her mother and the notion that she would fall for an older man online. Though her soft, gentle voice and waiflike features paint an exterior portrait of a young woman in over her head who doesn’t know any better, there’s an unlikely fire and ferocity to Van Dien’s performance – especially in her last few scenes – that lends a surprising and fascinating strength to Anna that the film would’ve done well to explore further.

Even with the power of Van Dien’s layered performance, there just isn’t enough vivacity or depth of character in Roost to do justice to the film’s dynamic premise. Held back by a script full of robotic dialogue and continually undercoated by bizarre editing and directorial choices, wobbly filmmaking holds Roost back from the effective family drama/thriller it could’ve been, and the star-making turn for Van Dien it should’ve been.