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THE OWNERS
Director: Julius Berg Cast: Maisie Williams, Andrew Ellis, Sylvester McCoy, Rita Tushingham, Ian Kenny, Jake Curran, Stacha Hicks MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:32 Release Date: 9/4/20 (limited; digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 3, 2020 There's a significant, if predictable, twist to the usual home-invasion thriller in The Owners. Screenwriters Julius Berg (who also directed) and Mathieu Gompel clearly aren't sure what to do with their mildly expectation-defying premise, so the whole affair just becomes a different kind of routine thriller. Two friends, Nathan (Ian Kenny) and Terry (Andrew Ellis), and a wild card named Gaz (Jake Curran) have a plan to rob a home, primarily a rumored safe, while the older couple that owns it is away at dinner. Waiting outside and eventually dragged into the crime is Nathan's girlfriend Mary (Maisie Williams), who wants no part of the robbery. She just wants her car, which Nathan borrowed, to go to work. When the safe proves impenetrable, Gaz convinces the others to wait for the return of homeowners Dr. Huggins (Sylvester McCoy) and his wife Ellen (Rita Tushingham). The doctor really doesn't anyone to get into the safe, and to the disapproval of everyone else, Gaz decides to take a harder approach to convince the old man. After some threats and an eruption of violence, the tables turn, transforming our criminal protagonists into targets. Relatively speaking, the filmmakers have chosen the most sympathetic of the main characters as their primary focus, as Mary, played with conviction by Williams, fights against Gaz's tactics and, then, gradually learns that her friends' helpless victims are neither helpless nor victims. Actually, Williams' performance as the conscience and, once things shift, the common sense of the group does a lot here. The filmmakers seem to be spinning their wheels, trying to give the surviving characters various reasons to ignore the obvious or to refuse taking action (an injury, some drugging, and a lot of locked doors). Berg certainly does a lot to create an atmosphere of mounting dread (confined spaces, roaming vermin, odd happenings in sight, and unknown events occurring behind closed doors), but the contrivances of the plot overwhelm most of those attempts. They only increase, in terms of what happens and how Berg portrays those events, as the movie reaches its extended climax, a lengthy game of cat-and-mouse. It plays out within the boxy frame of a suddenly constricted aspect ratio—intended to increase the claustrophobia but only serving as a visually restrictive distraction. In that way and through a series of sudden story developments, The Owners repeatedly hampers its own goals. Copyright © 2020 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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