There
is no “Make My Day” law in the nation that would cover the actions of
respectable-looking George and Gloria when dim-witted Mickey and Jules break
into their upscale exurban home. They could have just shot the moronic home
invaders, but instead they try to scratch their psychotic itches in Dan Berk
& Robert Olsen’s dark comedy, Villains,
which screened during Scary Movies XII.
Only
Mickey and Jules would knock-over a gas station, but forget to fill up the tank
first. As a result, they find themselves broken-down near George and Gloria’s
secluded home. Their original plan was to steal the car in the garage, but they
get side-tracked when they discover a little girl chained up in the basement.
At this point, their hosts walk in. Even though Mickey has the gun, George is
the one in control of the situation.
Things
get awkward quickly for Mickey and Jules. At least the little girl starts to
warm to Jules. Frankly, she is probably smarter than the young crooks, who are
definitely out of their league playing cat-and-mouse games with their nutty
captors.
Villains basically shares
the fundamental premise of Bad Samaritan,
Monster Party, and to an extent, Don’t Breathe, but those films do their
best to maintain a tone that is consistently tense and serious as a heart
attack. Berk & Olsen’s game plan to extract laughs and suspense from the
circumstances surrounding a child held captive in a basement is definitely
gutsy, but the results are hit-or-miss in the extreme.
Nobody
can blame the principal cast members, who are obviously working overtime to
pull off the comedy and the horror scenery chewing. Maika Monroe is quite
endearingly sweet and naïve as Jules, while Bill Skarsgård energetically plays
against his It-type as big, dopey
Mickey. Kyra Sedgwick is really weird and almost unrecognizable as the
dangerously neurotic Gloria, but Jeffrey Donovan might even be more impressive,
going all in and somehow pulling off all of George’s over-written dialogue with
sinister verve.
The
problem is we’ve been here before. The American movie business’s war on
suburban normalcy is getting predictable. At this point, it would be more
surprising if characters like George and Gloria were stable and decent. Not
recommended, Villains opens September
20th nationwide, following its New York premiere at Scary Movies
XII.
