Parents' Guide to Mid-Century

This thriller begins promisingly, reveling in architecture and offering a stark commentary on misogyny, but at the halfway point it turns silly, relying on stale clichés and an unsatisfying "twist." The opening scene of Mid-Century, set in 1963, slyly demonstrates misogyny at its simplest: A husband brings his wife a gift. She hopes it contains books (Naked Lunch in particular!) or a drill, but it's a pair of sexy undies. The husband then makes her try them on. Then, in the present day, Alice and Tom argue about having kids; Alice loves her job and doesn't want them. Tom's reply eerily recalls the 1963 husband: "Can you think about me, too?" The villain, then, is a hyper-misogynist, showing its extremes and offering context.

Director Sonja O'Hara uses visuals cleverly, showing Banner's particular kind of architecture -- a blend of indoor and outdoor spaces, plus creepy paintings of women -- to underline her themes. So it's a letdown when the big climactic "ritual" simply forgets it all. The second half of the movie feels as if it were lifted from some other film. The same goes for Tom's fate, which shall go unmentioned but provides a tool for the big showdown; it, too, feels cheap and betrays the movie's good first half. One final factor that marks Mid-Century more as a trashy Z-grade movie than as a smart, promising indie gem is the advertising of Bruce Dern -- who has a small role in a flashback -- as one of the movie's "stars." It's a letdown.