THE INHERITANCE (2024) - Mark Reviews Movies

The Inheritance, Vertical

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 11, 2024

The Inheritance gets enough right, especially in terms of its location and atmosphere and pacing, that it works. Sure, Chris LaMont and Joseph Russo's screenplay is fairly thin when it comes to its themes, which basically amount to the extents to which people will go in the name of greed, and characters, an inordinately wealthy family that finds themselves stuck in a grand manor overnight. However, director Alejandro Brugués knows that, first and foremost, this is a thriller with a neat hook, a few surprises, and a central location that can do a lot of the lifting. He lets it and fashions an increasingly creepy mystery around it.

The locale is nothing new, of course. It's a mansion in the middle of nowhere, currently occupied by Charles Abernathy (Bob Gunton), a billionaire magnate with his toes dipped in assorted fields of industry and entertainment. On its face, the manor is the perfect place for a murder mystery or a ghost story to unfold, with its long hallways, assortment of rooms, a grim wine cellar, a well-decorated pool, and even a hidden chamber behind a secret door.

Some settings have become clichés for a good reason. They last, because they're just too good to bypass, and there's a sort of comfort in arriving at this mansion and, deep down, knowing exactly what it has in store for us.

As for the story, well, we think we have an idea of what it has in store for us. Charles' adult children arrive for what they think will be a family gathering for their father's 75th birthday. They're a dysfunctional bunch.

Twins C.J. (David Walton) and Madeline (Rachel Nichols) are in charge of the day-to-day operations of the family's assorted business interests, and the pressures of maintaining a corporate empire have made them cold, cutthroat, and cynical. The youngest child Kami (Peyton List) has made her own path as a social media influencer with a fashion brand, and she's just bubbly enough to make us think that her father and elder siblings' influence has only extended to her drive to make money.

Finally and outside of the entire group are Drew (Austin Stowell) and his wife Hannah (Briana Middleton). They run the family's charitable organization and are happy enough leaving their ambitions at just that. He just wants a life as ordinary as possible under the circumstances of his birth, and she wants to be part of the family—not for any financial gain, but because that's the way it should be with family in her mind.

With those basics in place, the patriarch reveals the story's gimmick. He has called his children to the mansion—a bit irritated that Hannah came along, since the invitations specifically stated only direct family was supposed to show up, but not too much, because Hannah is so genuinely well-meaning—on important business. It's of the life-or-death variety, apparently.

Someone wants to kill Charles. He's fuzzy on the details, but basically, an old business deal had some unintended consequences. Now, there's essentially a bounty on his head, which is intended to be claimed by midnight, so the mansion, which has tons of mechanical locks and newly installed bulletproof windows, will soon go on complete lockdown.

Since the only people Charles knows he can fully trust are his children, they'll serve as his bodyguards. To ensure they do the job correctly, he has put their inheritances on the line. If Charles survives the night, the children will receive the money, but if he doesn't, all of his fortune will go to the charity instead. Despite being given an out by her father-in-law, Hannah decides to stay and help.

The mansion does, then, become the backdrop for a murder mystery in a way. As for whether or not it becomes the background for the other aforementioned thing, that's best left to be suspected. The fun of the plot is how it gradually shifts in what's actually happening and escalates in terms of each new development.

Initially, the children hold down the fort, so to speak, wondering if there is a real threat or if the twins can take advantage of what could be some psychotic episode on the part of their father for their own monetary interests. All of the children are paranoid of each other to some degree from the start, with C.J. and Madeline certain their other siblings must be scheming as they are, Kami annoyed by what must be a test or a prank, and Drew curious why no one else is taking this seriously.

Pretty quickly, it becomes clear that the threat is very real, and from there, we start to comprehend what that threat could be. It's not much of a surprise, especially given the circumstances of the first death to happen within the mansion. More noteworthy than that scene itself, though, is how Brugués stages it with his camera in a fixed position, obscured from the action by way of its location, and taking in the implied imagery of violence—a body being dragged and blood dripping in such a way that says something about the attacker.

Eventually, the film falls squarely into a specific genre. From there, the location makes a double kind of sense as a result, as Brugués uses the shadows and those extended hallways (Someone else being dragged down one of them, for example) and a couple of off-limits rooms to stage scenes of some craft that fulfill the expected requirements.

This might sound vague (which is intentional) and not like much, but if there's a workmanlike quality to The Inheritance, that's fine. Like any good worker worth something, Brugués gets the job done.

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