John Oak Dalton's Smart House

Cody takes an early look at a thriller that's coming soon from ITN Distribution.

The Girl in the Crawlspace and Scarecrow County director John Oak Dalton was gearing up to direct his third feature right when the pandemic shut everything down back in March of 2020. As he has said, he had to scrap the project the night before principal photography was scheduled to begin. He still hasn’t circled back to that idea, but I hope he will eventually. In the meantime, he has returned to the directing world with a thriller called Smart House.

Iabou Windimere stars as Mari, better known as ASM Mari, as she has racked up more than half a million followers by doing livestreams where she whispers into the microphone while doing other activities like brushing her hair or drawing. I really don’t get into the whole ASMR thing, especially the “whisper talk” part of it, since I find the sound of someone whispering to be really irritating – but a lot of people love it, and Mari is benefiting from that. She’s daughter of legendary hacker Cordell (Tom Cherry), who got in trouble with the law and is now serving a sentence of house arrest. As part of his sentence, Cordell isn’t allowed to have access to any technology more advanced than a landline phone. So Mari has moved into his house, a smart house run by an AI called Cassandra, which he designed himself, while he lives in the Internet-free home that used to belong to his mother. Cassandra is voiced by legendary scream queen Brinke Stevens, who has a great voice for such a job.

As soon as the movie begins, Mari is having issues with Cassandra. The smart house is running appliances when Mari doesn’t want it to, playing music at the worst times, and seems to be in surveillance mode when it shouldn’t. It soon becomes clear that someone has hacked into the system – and Mari is concerned that the hacker could be her ex Shawn (Joe Kidd), who was so terrible that she has nightmares about him. When things really go haywire and Mari is trapped in her own home by the Cassandra system, Cordell has to figure out how to help his daughter without setting off his ankle bracelet and getting sent to jail.

With a running time just under 76 minutes, Smart House makes for a quick and entertaining viewing experience. The movie is carried on the shoulders of Windimere and Cherry, both of whom do strong work in their roles, and it has an interesting set-up. Adding some visual flair to the movie is the fact that it was shot in December, so there are Christmas decorations and festive lighting all over the place. The Christmas season isn’t a focus, but just the fact that decorations can be seen throughout the movie is enough to get me to recommend that this be added to your list of movies to watch in December.

One issue I had with the movie was that I felt like Mari was in greater danger in the first half of the story, before the Cassandra system really goes out of control, than in the second half, which is when things are meant to be more intense than ever. I also found some of the stock footage used to portray Mari’s livestream viewers to be unintentionally amusing. But when things get less thrilling, Cordell takes charge, and it was fun to watch his long distance rescue efforts. So it all worked out.

Watching Smart House is a good time, and I’m really glad to see Dalton directing again. Here’s hoping we’ll have several more Dalton movies to see in the future – starting with that project he had to drop in 2020.