A young man, possibly in his early 30s, withdraws from social and cultural constructs to shut himself in his home for nine months. This is a bustling metropolis, replete with screaming neighbours, honking cars and annoying salesmen who frequently show up at the door, and yet Karan (Ali Fazal) has figured out a way to not step across his threshold for 279 days.

But the former banker finds his carefully constructed oasis of calm threatening to fall apart when his irritating neighbour — the daughter of a don, no less — leaves a suitcase in his care, with a man trussed up inside. A nosy journalist called Saira (Shriya Pilgaonkar) lands up, intrigued by Karan’s story, and adds to the mess.

The premise for House Arrest, a Netflix original film dropping on the streaming platform today, is ripe with potential, but the 104-minute film squanders it at almost every step to come up with a watch that often makes you roll your eyes. That is when you aren’t tearing out your hair (in Bala season, that’s rife with danger) at what could have been.

Written and co-directed by author Samit Basu (Shashanka Ghosh, the man behind rom coms like Khoobsurat and Veere Di Wedding is the other director), House Arrest is hinged on JOMO aka the ‘Joy Of Missing Out’, a concept that is fast gaining preference in a world where many are dropping out of the rat race.

Basu also frequently drops a mention of Hikikomori, a practice in which Japanese youths are increasingly shutting themselves out from society and living life in solitary confinement, their only connection to the world being through social media and smartphones. Karan is hooked to his devices all right — his phone rings often enough and he does stock trading and Skype consulting at home through his laptop to earn a living — but he’s perfectly happy to spend days just talking to his plants, whipping up a healthy meal or observing the world pass by from his balcony. Nothing, not even the taunts and pleas of his close pal JD (Jim Sarbh, who we only get to ‘see’ through holographic images every time he calls up Karan) will make Karan give up his self-imposed shut-in. But he soon finds that his world is about to change.

Starting off as an interesting look at a man’s motivations to shun society, House Arrest goes into rom com territory and also brings in a thriller element. All of this working within a confined space could have made for a riveting watch, but the film wants to be many things all at once, without managing to do justice to any. More often than not, Ali Fazal’s charming screen presence makes up for the flaws in a film, but here the actor — who has now hopped, skipped and jumped onto a Holly set peopled with Gal Gadot and Armie Hammer — is unable to rise above the mediocre mishmash that plays out on screen.

There are too many scenes devoted to the nameless man in the pink suitcase coming to his senses and then dropping senseless, while Karan’s neighbour Pinky (Barkha Singh) — dressed head to toe in pink and lugging along a pink furry suitcase — is singularly the most irritating character you would have watched in recent times, on screens big and small. We get that Pinky is meant to be an entitled dumb blonde type, but there is no reason for House Arrest to give her so much screen time. Or to her Khali-influenced bodyguard called Rambo.

What works partly for House Arrest are the conversations between Karan and Saira, who drops in to interview him, and the two hit it off from the get-go. Ali and Shriya — previously paired opposite each other in Mirzapur — have an easy chemistry and House Arrest is at its most watchable when the two, aware of the electric vibes between them, talk about lost love and choices made in life. But the makers fail to capitalise on what could have made for a fun rom com with a twist. As you watch talented actors — most of all Jim Sarbh — looking increasingly lost in the film, you feel that somewhere in House Arrest was an engaging story, but this isn’t quite it.

First with Drive and now with House Arrest... it’s not been a good November so far for Netflix. It’s perhaps time for the streaming platform to exercise some quality control and not become a dumping ground for bad Bolly.