“Inheritance,” a new movie starring Lily Collins and Simon Pegg and now on VOD, is a thriller that treats logic like a Whac-A-Mole game. Every time things almost make sense logic is bashed on the head and quickly disappears back into its hole.
The long strange journey begins when richie rich Archer Monroe (Patrick Warburton) dies of a sudden heart attack. He leaves behind widow Catherine (Connie Nielsen), politician-wannabe son William (Chace Crawford) and lawyer daughter Lauren (Lily Collins). At the reading of the last will and testament Lauren is dealt a bad hand after papa’s money is doled out to her mother, brother and various charities. Lauren is left a small stipend of $1 million and a for-her-eyes-only video directing her to an underground bunker. There she finds, and becomes responsible for, daddy’s dirty little secret.
In the fortified cavern she finds Morgan Warner (Simon Pegg wearing what looks like a “Fraggle Rock” wig), restrained by shackles in a windowless pit where he has rotted away for thirty years after witnessing Monroe commit a serious crime. He tells her he’s been here “longer than you’ve been alive.”
Question is, what does an idealistic prosecutor do when confronted with a terrible situation that could affect everything she and her family have worked for?
The silly plot twists and turns aren’t the only things hard to understand in “Inheritance.” It boggles the mind that this could be billed as a thriller. According to Wikipedia, by definition a thriller can be “characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving viewers heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety.” The only mood this leaden story elicited in me was boredom. Early on I was hopeful for a so-bad-it’s-good experience from “Inheritance.” Then the thudding realization hit that I was simply in store for an implausible, missed opportunity of a movie that instead of moving me to the edge of my seat made me want to lean back and take a nap.
Last summer, just before the original release date for “The Hunt,” a political satire starring “GLOW’s” Betty Gilpin, President Trump Tweeted, sight unseen, that it was “made in order … to inflame and cause chaos.” Being labelled “very, very bad for our Country!” by the most powerful man in the world the film got the political satire pulled from distribution. The President and the rest of us will finally get a chance to see what all the fuss was about when the movie hits screens this weekend.
Breathing the same bloody air as dystopian movies like “The Purge,” “The Hunt” is a violent b-movie that examines America’s current political divide in very broad strokes. Gilpin plays Crystal, one of a group of strangers—i.e. “deplorables”—kidnapped by Athena (Hilary Swank), the ringleader of a group of “liberal ‘cucks’ who run the deep state.”
“Every year these liberal elites kidnap a bunch of normal folks like us,” reveals Gary (Ethan Suplee), “and hunt us for sport.” The game becomes less lopsided when Crystal fights back, eliminating the “competition” one by one.
Horror films have long used guts and gore as allegories for modern societal woes. “Frankenstein” is a God complex story. “Night of the Living Dead” is a metaphor for the past coming back to wreak havoc on the future. Those, and others like social-politically themes “The Host” and “Videodrome,” or “Invasion of the Body Snatchers’s” look at conformity, among others, provide important and entertaining ways of looking at ourselves through a different lens. “The Hunt,” while entertaining in a b-movie kind of way, doesn’t really rise to the designation of important. Like so many things these days, the outrage that preceded its release was blown out of proportion.
There’s no allegory here. “The Hunt” is a literal representation of political polarization in a “Hunger Games”-style of haves and have-nots. It’s the 1% vs the 99% until a plot twist suggests that this may be an even emptier exercise in us vs them than originally thought. Most of what passes for social commentary—and it hits most every social situation from racism, class division, crisis acting, immigration, fake news, corruption, gender identification and cultural appropriation—is punctuated with a gun shot or a joke. One “deplorable” calls another a “snowflake” when he refuses to shoot her after she’s been injured. The punchline? A gunshot.
“The Hunt” is a gutsy (sometimes literally) grindhouse movie that only goes as deep as to poke fun at people who use “their” instead of “there.” But while it may not have the power, as the Pres sez, to inflame and cause chaos, it is an effectively gritty little thriller more interested in the fist-in-your-face action (delivered with the subtlety of an Alex Jones monologue) than getting in your face with its message.
Family reunions are often fraught with tension. Old wounds are opened by familiarity bred by contempt but few reconciliations have turned as dark and twisted as the father and son get together in Elijah Wood’s new thriller “Come to Daddy.”
Wood is Norval, a self-described music industry big deal, raised by his single mother in Beverly Hills. After receiving a letter from his estranged father requesting a face-to-face meeting, he makes the trip to a remote California home to meet a man he barely knows. He’s met by Brian (Stephen McHattie), a flinty, drunken older man with a sharp tongue. When Brian tries to impress the older man by dropping Elton John’s name, Brian calls him out in an embarrassing and cruel way. The situation doesn’t improve with the introduction of alcohol and soon the situation becomes dangerous.
That’s it! No spoilers here. Trust me when I say that unless your family gatherings include torture and excrement dripped shivs, you haven’t experienced a father and son situation quite like this before.
Darkly humorous and disquieting, “Come to Daddy” is a gonzo thriller that revels in the off-kilter nature of the escalating intrigue of the story. As the running time clicks through to the end credits the stakes for Noval surge in increasingly outrageous ways. It’s all good, gory fun that plays up the absurdity of the situation while still maintaining the complexity of the father-son relationship. It’s a mish mash of revenge, squeamish violence and surreal family drama that should please midnight madness fans but leave others reaching for a barf bag.
As unbelievable as it may seem Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen have never appeared on screen together. They did a stint on Broadway in August Strindberg’s “Dance of Death” but the con job flick “The Good Liar” is the first time they have acted together in a film. It’s been worth the wait. More on that later.
The old-fashioned story of secrets and lies begins in a very modern way, on a dating site for widowed septuagenarians. Mirren plays Betty McLeish, a wealthy widow and retired Oxford professor. She’s upbeat and realistic, looking for new love in the time she has left. McKellen is Roy Courtnay, a charming but dirty-rotten-scoundrel looking to separate Betty from her cash who complains that the dating site is “a system for matching the delusional with the hopeless.” Over their lunch he beguiles her and soon romance blossoms. “Do you know who you are?” she asks. “You’re the only person on this planet who makes me feel that I’m not alone.” When the crafty old guy fakes a knee injury so he can move in with her she agrees it is the second part of his plan (along with a skeevy sidekick played by “Downton Abbey” star Jim Carter) to convince her to sign over her bank accounts, combining their money to provide for their future together. Despite the objections of her grandson Steven (Russell Tovey), she agrees but first they take a trip to Berlin where cracks in their stories are revealed. “In just a blink,” Roy says, “your life is changed forever.”
“The Good Liar” is a b-movie with an a-list cast.
Director Bill Condon has made a nicely crafted cat-and-mouse thriller that for most of its running time rattles along at a good clip, doling out clues like candy at Halloween. It’s when the twists become preposterous that the plot lets down its fine cast. As the story starts swinging for the fences McKellen and Mirren are left batting clean-up, trying to keep the thrills intact while the drawn-out conclusion dilutes the pleasures of the earlier, tension-laden scenes.
It’s a delight to watch McKellen and Mirren’s chemistry. As Roy, McKellen is easy charm one second, hard and cunning the next. Mirren gives Betty a naïve appeal tempered with the excitement of the start of a new adventure. Together they click, belonging together like peanut butter and jelly but nothing is as it seems in “The Good Liar.” The film’s biggest pleasure is (MILD SPOILER) witnessing these two fine actors carefully gauge their performances as the power dynamic between them shifts. Their work provides the thrills the over-plotted story misses.
