Overview
The house is the primary setting of Screwdriver. It is the California home of Robert and Melissa, where Emily stays after the collapse of her relationship with Sean.
The house is large, clean, elegant, and childfree, with beautiful furniture, hardwood, modern fixtures, an orderly kitchen, and a formal dining room. Its calm appearance contrasts with the control Robert and Melissa exert over Emily’s food, movement, sleep, medicine, art, and social contact.
Layout
The film uses the hallway, sitting room, kitchen, guest bedroom, living room, dining room, study, master bedroom, entryway, and bathroom as locations. The sitting room is where Emily waits for Robert, smokes, cries, sketches, paints, watches television, and later sits catatonically after Sean leaves.
The guest bedroom is the room assigned to Emily. It contains the nightstand where she finds the red comb and becomes the place where Melissa tucks her in, where Robert and Melissa later lock her in darkness, and where she wakes in the morning with straightened sheets and a bandaged palm.
The study is the site of Robert’s chamber exercise. The dining room hosts the early meals and the final private celebration. The bathroom becomes Emily’s refuge during the celebration, the place where she wounds her palm with the screwdriver, and the place where she finds the hidden prescription bottles behind the locked medicine drawer.
Role in the Film
Robert tells Emily that the house with him and Melissa is the only place where God cannot touch her. That claim turns the house from refuge into a controlled environment. Emily is permitted to move through its rooms, but Robert and Melissa object when she goes outside without permission and repeatedly reset the interior after conflict.
By the morning after the bathroom incident, the house has been restored to calm order. The bathroom is clean, the medicine drawer contains only ordinary supplies, and breakfast is waiting. That restoration allows Melissa and Robert to explain away the previous night’s violence and present Emily’s continued stay as her free choice.