Of all the actor comebacks expected in 2026, Jason Biggs wasn’t in the cards. Biggs more or less disappeared shortly after his breakthrough in American Pie, mostly because the dorky, sweaty energy he brought to the 1999 high school film was soon made irrelevant by the popularity of the male personalities cultivated in the “Apatow era” of comedy stars. Biggs wasn’t much of a leading man when asked to do romantic comedies, and the cultural appreciation for American Pie’s raunchy humor aged so quickly that his follow-up parts in Loser and Saving Silverman bombed. The best performance Biggs has ever given is in Anything Else, an overlooked Woody Allen film from 2003 that didn’t get a fair shake at the time. Biggs was perfect in that film because he’s an embodiment of what an Allen stand-in character should look like, even if the writer/director would rather hand his self-modeled roles to the likes of Ewan McGregor, Hugh Jackman, or Joaquin Phoenix.
Untitled Home Invasion Romance is Biggs’ debut as a filmmaker, and it’s initially a biting satire of his own attempt to stage a career resurgence. Biggs cast himself as Kevin Stanwell, a struggling actor best known for his role in an embarrassing commercial; it’s a not-so-subtle allusion to the reputation Biggs earned after his association with Jim Levenstein from American Pie. Just as Biggs has tried to revive his career by doing something radically different by directing, Kevin’s plan to save his declining marriage to Suzie Stone (Meaghan Rath) is to take her away to her childhood home for a romantic weekend. Unbeknownst to Suzie, Kevin has hired his acting buddy Ernie Guerra (Arturo Castro) to pose as a burglar who he can foil in front of his wife, proving himself to be a loving and strong-willed husband. This is the point where the metaphor is divergent from reality; Kevin’s plan is a disaster that forces him to go on the defensive, but Biggs is proven to be a competent genre director with a clear understanding of tone.
The more generic version of Untitled Home Invasion Romance would likely involve Kevin’s realization that he didn’t need to change who he was for Suzie to love him, and it’d end with the misunderstanding cleared up. However, Biggs is smart enough to know that there’s no way this scenario can end with Kevin absolved because his plan from the start is manipulative and self-serving. Kevin bought off more than he could chew, not realizing that the home is linked to traumatic memories from Suzie’s childhood involving a class bully who she killed in self-defense, even if there are still questions about her motivations.
Untitled Home Invasion Romance is transformed into a thriller when the inciting incident goes wrong; Kevin isn’t in the house at the time that the staged crime is supposed to occur, and Ernie’s killed by Suzie, who is far more competent at defending herself than he ever realized. Suzie’s a victim and an aggressor, and she’s given a role of substance that isn’t dependent on Kevin’s self-consciousness. Although Untitled Home Invasion Romance is small-scale and set in a riverside community to cut back on costs, it’s also inspired by 1980s comedies in the vein of Ruthless People or Something Wild. Those films involved a cavalcade of side characters who force the central duo to work together, and Untitled Home Invasion Romance has Ernie’s brothers, Victor (Chris Young) and Oscar (René Escobar Jr.), arrive in town to seek revenge for his murder.
The point that Biggs makes is that Kevin, by putting his wife in an uncomfortable situation where she must deal with repressed feelings, incentivized Suzie to become her true self. The trajectory is successful because Biggs realizes half-way through the film that Rath is the better actor of the two, and the film’s much more entertaining when Suzie’s centered. Rath is coming off of a strong performance earlier this year in the AMC series The Audacity, in which she played a ruthless board member at a duplicitous tech company. While her character in The Audacity wielded more power, Rath is equally effective as Suzie because she’s faced with becoming the monster that her former friends and neighbors assumed she was. Although Biggs lucked out in casting such a talented actress as his onscreen partner, he’s also able to walk a fine line as a writer that doesn’t trek the film into territory that would be too uncomfortable. It would’ve been easy for Untitled Home Invasion Romance to step into the same conversations about abuse and trauma that seem to dominate indie genre fare, but it’s mostly focused on the hidden secrets and culture of gossip within seemingly idealistic small towns.
Biggs doesn’t overshoot with too much aesthetic ambition. Although it looks visually bland at times, Biggs understood that long takes and wide shots are the best venue for him to showcase the performances, a fitting decision given that he’s an “actors’ director.” The biggest impediment faced by Untitled Invasion Romance is that it was released around the same time as Over Your Dead Body, another comedy about a troubled couple, a murder gone wrong, and a scheme involving an isolated lakeside weekend vacation.
Over Your Dead Body was also directed by a comedy actor (The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone), but it’s more stylized, with elaborate stunt work, gore effects, and calculated set pieces. Biggs is a less-experienced director than Taccone, and chose to take a more stripped-down approach. It’s the right move for a debut director and a choice that’s befitting of the film’s themes. The conflict in Untitled Home Invasion Romance is as messy as the characters are.