Motion Detected is a low budget thriller masquerading as a studio thriller, and for the most part it works.  Miguel (Carlo Mendez) and Eva (Natasha Esca) move into a large smart home in Los Angeles, fleeing Mexico City where Eva was the victim of assault during a home invasion. However, as anyone who has seen a thriller knows, this new house is by no means safe, secure, or comforting. Miguel must return to work in Mexico City, but the smart home security system, manufactured, installed and supported by Diablo Systems, is not the protector he assures Eva it is.  Practical tip for tenants: if the home security system is named “Diablo,” unless the previous tenant was a metal band, maybe don’t rent the house.

The security system has more bugs than a beehive and an alarm sounds at all hours announcing, “Motion Detected.”  Eva may be paranoid and the system may be glitching, and her PTSD might be making her see things that aren’t there, except there are other things that certainly are there.  The cameras show movement – something vaguely resembling the Predator in ‘invisible’ mode – up and down the stairs. Is it a digital phantom on the servers – a memory of previous owners going up and down the stairs, or is the system catching something in the house that is less physical, less human?

At heart a haunted house story, Motion Detected effectively plays on and critiques the idea of a “security system.” Eva (and potentially the audience) jumps every time the alarm goes off and the voice cries through the house “Motion detected.”  When everything is detected and perceived as a possible threat, then the real threats can blend in and be ignored as well.  The film and emotional journey are Eva’s, and Esca’s performance, which takes up most of the screen time, charts Eva’s descent from strong but suffering PTSD to paranoid and irrational.

The biggest issue with the film is that its supernatural elements are set up in the pre-credit sequence, but are never really resolved or explored in the rest of the film.  The main plot is never truly linked to what happened in the house before until the last scene and as a result feels tacked on. Sadly, the film hints at the better film it could have been.

The house, and thus the film’s mise-en-scene, is lovely, and writer/directors Justin Gallaher and Sam Roseme film it, and Eva, in often interesting ways.  The camera is active and moving, and the audience often sees Eva from above or the side, hinting at her being constantly watched.  All those cameras there to protect are also quite intrusive on their own – Eva is never truly alone and never truly secure – something is always watching. The film effectively shows Eva coming to understand her supposedly safe, smart house is actually her prison, in more ways than one.

That we’ve seen this kind of thriller before does not mean that it is not done well in Motion Detected.  Seeing that it could have been done even better had the initial supernatural history of the house been more fully integrated into the main plot frustrates what could have been a truly interesting and original film.