'Overnight' cuts to the comic core of social anxiety, meeting new friends

<h3 class="briefHead">Mini-review: 'The Overnight'</h3>

Writer/director Patrick Brice's racy, low-key comedy "The Overnight" qualifies as a social horror movie, complete with suspense, plot twists and strange, intimidating characters you're never sure are exactly what they seem to be.

Alex (Adam Scott) and Emily (Taylor Schilling) move with their small son RJ from Seattle to the relatively sedate East side of Los Angeles. Feeling dislocated, they worry they won't find good friends.

Then they meet Kurt (Jason Schwartzman) at a neighborhood park where his son is playing with RJ. Kurt seems affable, and he insists the couple come over for family pizza night with his very French wife Charlotte (Judith Godreche).

Alex and Emily do just that, regurgitating all the anxiety that comes with making the all-important first impression (prompting Alex to remove the label from his bottle of cheap wine).

With the kids in bed upstairs in Kurt's exquisitely detailed home, the adults begin the process of getting to know each other. The evening tone takes a dark turn as Kurt and Charlotte go down the TMI road to Discomfortville.

Are the hosts swingers? Or something else? Emily asks Alex.

Brice builds the suspense in "The Overnight" with a foundation of social anxiety that anyone who's been in the Seattle couple's shoes will relate to. Before the night is over, Brice has put his two couples through a patently absurd, yet totally believable, test that puts them in touch with not only each other, but with themselves.

For baby boomers, "The Overnight" works something like the once-risque "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" rewritten by Dr. Phil with a Generation Y touch provided by executive producers Mark Duplass and Jay Duplass.

"The Overnight" opens at the Century Centre, Chicago. Rated R for drug use, language, graphic nudity and sexual situations. 78 minutes. ★ ★ ★