Year of Release: 2024
Director: Alejandro Brugués
Starring: Bob Gunton, Briana Middleton, Rachel Nichols, Peyton List, Austin Stowell, David Walton, Reese Alexander, Keith Arbuthnot, Chris Wood
Genre: Thriller, Horror
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 2
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review
Alejandro Brugués has made a career of directing various horror films, mostly segments in anthologies, and also TV shows, including "Into the Dark" and "From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series". "The Inheritance" is focused on the events surrounding a family who come together to celebrate the birthday of one of its members, in this case the father, Charles Abernathy. All his adult children are drawn in, with his son Drew bringing along his wife Hannah. There's some tension between all the siblings, but they all go into the manor to meet their father, who then proceeds to tell them how the evening is going to take place. He makes a shocking revelation, factually stating that he is going to be killed at midnight. He also states that all security has left the house, and the only people staying in the house are himself and his children. He wants Hannah to leave, as she's no Abernathy. He then explains the rest of the scenario. If his children manage to protect him until midnight, they will all have access to an equally divided part of his inheritance. If he dies, the funds will be distributed amongst a series of charities. Everyone decides to stay, and the house goes under a tight lock-in. As the evening evolves, strange occurrences start taking place, and each of the siblings come under threat.
Upon a quick first observation, one would assume this film is in the same vein and style as Rian Johnson's "Knives Out" series, or even an Agatha Christie "whodunit" type of mystery. Sadly as the film evolves, and the film changes directions and opts to move in a supernatural direction, its thrill and the effectiveness of its atmosphere quickly diminish, leaving the shallowness of the character development and relationships between the characters all the more exposed. The initial setup for the narrative is quite effective, bringing to mind some similarities to what Tyler Gillet and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin for instance did with "Abigail" and even their other film "Ready or Not", or the aforementioned Rian Johnson's "Knives Out" films, sadly the tilt into the supernatural feels undercooked, and upon the development of the film as further details are revealed, it also fails to provide the crackling twist the creative team was expecting to deliver. The third act of the film is indeed underwhelming, since the atmosphere and tension that were created was originated by the brief interactions between the family members, which means by the time the supernatural aspect of the story comes along, it just doesn't organically blend with everything else that has been taking place and that these characters have established. The film almost feels like a rather insipid, bloodless pilot for a tv show, one that refuses to probe deeper, and give the characters and the entity something more substantial to do with their screen time. The cast led by the always reliable Bob Gunton sadly can't salvage the film, though Rachel Nichols and Peyton List try their best with the archetypes they're given (and writers need to come up with a different way to portray social media influencers on screen, since this angle has been repeated ad nauseam). The production team is rather generic, and fails to entice much gloom or even a gothic aspect to the set itself. It's a film that is not particularly memorable.
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