Post by Dracula on May 14, 2022 9:42:43 GMT -5
Windfall(5/6/2022)
Windfall would be the second “limited cast straight-to-streaming thriller” I’ve seen recently, a trend that might have been the result of pandemic era shooting conditions. This one is set at a remote Southern California vacation home of a tech CEO (Jesse Plemmons), who unexpectedly arrives at this home with his wife (Lily Collins) to find a squatter (Jason Segel) robbing the place. Panicking, the robber takes the two of them hostage and there’s a standoff of sorts as they wait for a cash delivery to arrive that the robber intends to run away with. From there it becomes clear that the CEO’s marriage to his wife is rocky and the process of being held hostage together kind of makes them snipe at each other while in captivity. So, it’s kind of like The Ref but played straight instead of as a comedy. It’s a setup with some potential but I don’t think they really pull it off here. The CEO is of course an asshole, but the film seems to be trying to draw some kind of equivalence between him and the violent criminal hostage taker that I don’t think really holds together on that level and I especially don’t believe the borderline Stockholm Syndrome that the wife is supposed to go through, which is pretty key to the movie and neither the script nor Lily Collins performance really sell it. There’s some interesting elements here and I enjoyed Plemmons and Segel and also Collins when she isn’t being asked to do the impossible but it’s not really enough and the minimalism of the setup doesn’t have quite the novelty that I think the creators assumed it did.
** out of Five
Windfall would be the second “limited cast straight-to-streaming thriller” I’ve seen recently, a trend that might have been the result of pandemic era shooting conditions. This one is set at a remote Southern California vacation home of a tech CEO (Jesse Plemmons), who unexpectedly arrives at this home with his wife (Lily Collins) to find a squatter (Jason Segel) robbing the place. Panicking, the robber takes the two of them hostage and there’s a standoff of sorts as they wait for a cash delivery to arrive that the robber intends to run away with. From there it becomes clear that the CEO’s marriage to his wife is rocky and the process of being held hostage together kind of makes them snipe at each other while in captivity. So, it’s kind of like The Ref but played straight instead of as a comedy. It’s a setup with some potential but I don’t think they really pull it off here. The CEO is of course an asshole, but the film seems to be trying to draw some kind of equivalence between him and the violent criminal hostage taker that I don’t think really holds together on that level and I especially don’t believe the borderline Stockholm Syndrome that the wife is supposed to go through, which is pretty key to the movie and neither the script nor Lily Collins performance really sell it. There’s some interesting elements here and I enjoyed Plemmons and Segel and also Collins when she isn’t being asked to do the impossible but it’s not really enough and the minimalism of the setup doesn’t have quite the novelty that I think the creators assumed it did.
** out of Five
