Review of The Domestics

The US has been devastated by war and disease, killing off most of the population and leaving survivors without a government or civil order. What's left is different gang controlled territories by The Sheets, The Cherries, The Plow Boys, The Gamblers, and The Domestics. The Sheets wear sheets. The Cherries are an all-girl gang. The Plow Boys drive a big plow. The Gamblers are the most interesting, continually playing games of chance, spinning prize wheels or doing rock-paper-scissors to decide whether to kill someone or not. That group had a bit more to their mythology and are the most interesting, having an actual culture rather than just an interesting outfit or namesake prop. The Domestics are the gang who are the most normal and identifiable (you know, domestic) and that gang is where our two heroes herald from. The distinct look of each gang, outside of the normal Domestics, made this film seem like a post-apocalyptic version of Walter Hill's "The Warriors" with our hero gang, The Domestics, having the bop their way through enemy gang territory to get to safety. There's even a DJ narrating between the film's events, just as Hill's DJ did in his 1979 film. The story wastes no time getting down to business with a husband (Tyler Hoechlin) and wife (Kate Bosworth) setting out across the county to find out why Bosworth's parents stopped answering on their CB radio. As will Walter Hill's film, writer/director Mike P. Nelson's story unfolds in a series of episodic events, where the couple encounters various gangs, although unlike "The Warriors," this film comes to a head with a major confrontation between all of the warring gangs. That climactic action scene is pretty good, but my favorite episode comes early in the story when the couple is rescued by a kind man, Lance Reddick, and his son who takes the pair back to his warm welcoming home to meet his family and enjoy a hot meal, which (SPOILER ALERT!) ends up being PEOPLE! It's a wonderfully creepy episode with this seemingly normal and caring family turning out to be cannibals. What makes the episode work so well is that it doesn't build to a familiar Texas Chainsaw Massacre crescendo with Bosworth and Hoechlin becoming the family's next meal, but they instead find themselves calmly being invited to join the family. I wish more of "The Domestics" was made up of more unique and unexpected of episodes such as this, instead of the more familiar encounter/fight/flee formula that makes up a majority of the couple's encounters (though their encounter with The Gamblers in a ramped up version of Russian Rouletter that's a bit like "The Deer Hunter" meets "SAW" is pretty wild). Overall, "The Domestics" has the grim look of "The Road" but is more similar to the comic book post-apocalyptic action of something along the lines of "The Purge" or "Z-Nation", which isn't a bad thing, but I think this movie had the potential for greatness with it's solid cast, excellent production design, and some cool ideas sprinkled throughout.