One of the joys of independent film is the sense of risk. Studio films have always, to a degree, played it safe. These days they’re even more risk averse, due to the flood of executives from the finance and tech industries. The majority of those people have very little interest in making art or pushing the limits of cinema. Instead, they want the maximum return on investment with the minimum amount of risk. If that means making decisions based on algorithms or artificial intelligence, so be it. An executive with Disney or Sony will greenlight the most offensively stupid piece of junk, and if said piece of junk makes money, that executive will feel good about themselves.

Indie films, on the other hand, are all about following the passion of filmmakers. Sometimes amusingly so. I have seen insanely surreal dramas, achingly beautiful transgender romances, and horror movies with homicidal stuffed animals. I’d bet you that in all of those instances, the directors wanted their movies to be profitable, but the priority was to tell the story they needed to tell. If their movie bombed, then at least they could walk away with a clear conscience. 

Then there’s people like me. Critics. The (increasingly irrelevant) third factor in filmmaking, the poor schlubs who watch stuff, then tell people like you what they thought. As a critic, I’m in a strange spot, since I’m simultaneously more critical of everything and more willing to take risks. That brings us to Hemet, Or the Landlady Don’t Drink Tea, an indie horror-comedy I wasn’t crazy about that features a charmingly batshit performance I think would never appear in a “mainstream” film.

In the not-too-distant future, much like this timeline, things are kind of terrible. The U.S. economy is in lousy shape. The nation is ravaged by an epidemic. Elected officials are corrupt, incompetent, or a fun mixture of the two. Where things are radically different is largely due to the fact that the epidemic is caused by bath salts, and the afflicted become flesh-eating zombies* who specifically devour the legs of their victims. Yes, I’m serious and no, I haven’t had a stroke.

Anyway, our story does not take place in the concrete jungle of New York, the flesh factory of Los Angeles, or the city of sin Las Vegas. Instead, it all happens in…Hemet, California. This modest hamlet in the San Jacinto Valley is where Liz Topham-Myrtle (Brian Patrick Butler) lives, and where she operates a dingy apartment complex.

As a landlady, Liz is an utter nightmare. It’s bad enough that she massively overcharges her tenants, plays favorites, and evicts people on a whim, which is what happens early on to poor Martin (Merrick McCartha). It’s worse that she’s racist, sadistic, homicidally insane, just the most enthusiastically vile person you could ever hope to meet. Even worse is the fact that she’s got Sheriff Hunting (Randy Davison) under her thumb.

Liz tells her tenants she’s rich. Is she? Unlikely! But she does have a plan to become rich and rule Hemet with an iron fist (yes, seriously). It involves one of her tenants, the confidently dumb Tank (Nick Young) murdering another tenant, Gary (Matthew Rhodes), then framing two other tenants for the crime. They are the seriously put-upon Rosie (Kimberly Weinberger) and free-spirited dumb-dumb Howie (Pierce Wallace). Problem is, the plan gets screwed up. Rosie survives, and now she’s got to dodge zombies, navigate paranoia, and get to the truth by the skin of her teeth.

Hemet, Or the Landlady Don’t Drink Tea is the feature debut of director Tony Olmos. He had a budget of twenty-nine thousand dollars. That bought him limited locations, limited practical effects, and old lady makeup that’s so bad that it circles all the way around and becomes great. The end result is a horror-comedy that didn’t work too much for me, but when it did, I was cackling. While Olmos’ film is a hair under ninety minutes, the pacing is problematic. Scenes frequently drag, and that’s fatal to both the funny stuff and the scary stuff. The night scenes also seem to be underlit, and there were several moments where I squinted to figure out what I was supposed to be seeing. Having said that, Olmos and his team do nice work with the gore effects, and there’s some legit creativity in how the horror sequences are staged. As a director, Olmos knows what he’s doing. I wonder if the root problem was the budget. With it being that small, there’s virtually zero room for error, and I suspect he had no choice but to make the best of what were likely multiple bad situations.

The screenplay by Brian Patrick Butler is also a mixed bag. Part of the problem is with the dialogue, but I don’t have an issue with the fact that it all sounds like “movie dialogue.” Writers such as Diablo Cody and Quentin Tarantino craft dialogue that a) doesn’t sound like it’s spoken by a real human being and b) is great, regardless. That’s fine, and Butler falls into that category. Too often, the dialogue is interchangeable, and every character is a wiseassy quipmeister. The other issue is with characterization, and with the exceptions of Rosie and Liz, everybody is to one degree or another the same kind of scumbag. I’m good with the vast majority of characters being people of low character. I want individuality, though. Here, most of the characters suck in the same kind of way.

A persistent issue in indie films is the fact that directors don’t always have the highest caliber performers to pick from. This cast is no different, and while none of the performances are bad, only a couple are solidly good. One of them is Kimberly Weinberger as the perpetually annoyed Rosie. You can understand why she’d be irritated, considering she deals with a dopey boyfriend, a psychotic landlady, a lousy job, and the end of the world. Weinberger does good work playing one of the only normal people in the film, and her constant exasperation is a fun contrast to the madness orbiting around her. Speaking of madness, Brian Patrick Butler seems to be having a blast playing Liz. He’s given himself all the best lines, and his performance is berserk in the best ways. It’s true that Liz is a walking id, the kind of person who gleefully has no filter and no decency. She also has a kind of low Trumpian cunning, and she excels at pulling the strings of all the ding-dongs in town. The “Liz” makeup Butler wears makes the character look like Granny Leatherface, which is in no way a criticism. If there’s a primary reason to give this film a shot, it’s to watch Butler’s nightmarish performance as Liz. 

As I mentioned too many words ago, I wasn’t wild about Hemet, or The Landlady Don’t Drink Tea. So what? The fact remains that Tony Olmos, Brian Patrick Butler, and the cast and crew did their best to make the movie they wanted with the resources they had at hand. They took sizable risks, particularly with Butler’s bananas-ass portrayal of Liz, and good for them. Think a role that insane would show up in the MCU? I doubt it.

*As opposed to plant-eating zombies? Why has nobody made a film about vegan zombies?

Tim Brennan Movie Critic

Tim has been alarmingly enthusiastic about movies ever since childhood. He grew up in Boulder and, foolishly, left Colorado to study Communications in Washington State. Making matters worse, he moved to Connecticut after meeting his too-good-for-him wife. Drawn by the Rockies and a mild climate, he triumphantly returned and settled down back in Boulder County. He's written numerous screenplays, loves hiking, and embarrassed himself in front of Samuel L. Jackson. True story.