The Rental (2020) - Movie Review
What do you get when the little brother of a disgraced Hollywood A-Lister decides he’s had enough of Air BNB?
A surprisingly tense and original thriller.
Let’s discuss…
The Rental is a 2020 home invasion thriller brought to us by writer / director Dave Franco along with writers Joe Swanberg and former IGN / Gamespot fixture Mike Demski.
Not a confidence inspiring group, am I right?
That’s what I thought too, especially with our normal rules of a film having more than two writers. However, this film bucks those stereotypes to deliver a powerful character study that’s also a satisfying thriller.
The film revolves around two couples as they head out on vacation along the Oregon coast. The couples are similar but different. Charlie and Michelle are the almost stereotypical Silicon Valley power couple. Charlie’s screw-up brother Josh is dating Charlie’s business partner, Minda. Things start out friendly and fun, but quickly turn grim as dark secrets are revealed and old wounds are opened. Little does the group know how dark things will soon become. Someone’s watching and waiting. Will these self-obsessed yuppies realize what’s actually going on before it’s too late? Or will their obsession with their own petty envy turn deadly? Find out in tonight’s feature, The Rental!
You can really tell that the film was written by actors. Dave Franco, brother of (alleged) sex-pest James Franco, has always been a more likable actor than his brother and much like other less known brothers, has produced an incredible character acting career. The same could be said of Joe Swanberg, a prolific character actor in his own right. The dialogue in this film and the way the characters are so fleshed out is refreshing. This is essentially a home invasion / slasher film, though there’s very little violence or gore depicted on screen. The tension and scares really come from the collapse of the relationships involved and the fact that we the viewer know how deep the secrets go. We know how bad things could and will get, but we’re powerless to stop it.
Given, I hated all the character except Alison Brie’s Michelle, who is the only good and normal human being in this film, but that is on purpose. She is the only relatable, kind person in this film. She’s the only one who thinks of others. She a supportive wife and a nurturing sister-in-law. You need a character this relatable and likable in order to make the film bearable when Mina, Josh, and Charlie are on screen. You look to her for the real, human response to the increasingly darkening circumstances.
Brie is the standout character, but that’s not to say the rest of the cast were slouches.
Dan Stevens is a genre legend at this point. The man transitioned from British snoozefests and took his place in the horror genre with gusto taking leading roles in great genre entries like 2014’s The Guest, 2018’s Apostle, and the recently released (as of 2024) Abigail. He’s a powerhouse that plays the villain so very well, and even though he might not be the bad guy here, he’s definitely an absolute bell-end. Which Stevens nails.
Jeremy Allen White also is outstanding. I’ve never seen him before, other than for ads for his hit show The Bear. He turned in an impressive performance here as the screw-up frat-boy brother to Charlie’s a-hole yuppie. He’s almost likable, like his type are, but he’s a meathead deep down. You hope he’ll turn it around, you hope he’ll behave, but like with real-life meatheads—there’s little hope.
Rounding out the cast is Sheila Vand. You might know her from the brilliant 2014 Iranian Horror, A Girl Walks Home at Night. She’s a brilliant actress who plays the character of Mina perfectly. She’s a genius programmer that has an insane inferiority complex and perceives any failure or rejection as racially motivated since she is of middle eastern heritage.
More on this in the Spoilers section.
It’s an amazing cast, with an incredible setting. The film is gorgeous to watch and no expense was spared when it came to the cinematography. The Oregon coastline is showcased with sweeping landscape shots, to illustrated how far the Air BNB rental is from the city. The wide shots are used at the beginning of the film and then the shots began to contract. It’s as if the personal drama is making the walls close in and eventually there’s no where else to go except into the arms of the figure in the shadows. It’s brilliant technique.
This isn’t a gore fest. It’s not a jump scare film. This is a slow burn thriller that is perfectly paced at 88 minutes. There is no downtime in this movie. It goes full bore until it hits the brick wall of climax. My viewing partner and I were on the edge of our seats, no necessarily because we cared for the characters—Except Michelle—but it was due to the ambiguous format of the film. You don’t ever know what’s really happening until the credits role.
The ending credits are a brilliant denouement that have no dialogue, and yet they explain everything.
This film reminds me of one of the most disturbing films I’ve watched, 2007’s The Poughkeepsie Tapes. It’s not as guttural and gross as that film was, but it could very well be a well produced and funded sequel to that film.
More on this in the Spoilers section.
I was surprised to see how brutal the reviews were on this film. It’s at a 5.7 on IMDB, with most people complaining about the film being ambiguous, and the characters being unlikable. I think these same people would have given it an 8.0 if Jordan Peele was listed as Writer and Director. It feels like many of the reviews are meant to take shots at Dave Franco due to his genetic relation to his now disgraced brother, which is a shame—because this is a breath of fresh air.
And honestly, I think the messaging went a little over folks heads.
Much like Jordan Peele’s films highlight the double standards in society in regards to race and gender, and the hilarious hypocrisy of woke culture. This film takes shots at the self-righteous side of that same argument. The woke folks who rely on their outrage to bolster their self confidence.
Check this film out currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video / Shudder.
and Now…
…Without Further Ado…
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SPOILERS
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…So, following up on my first footnote. Mina’s character is the actual villain in this piece. The killer himself, is more of a function of this movies world. He is an arbiter. Mina begins this conflict by interpreting her inability to get approved for the rental as a racist act by the custodian of the house. The custodian is a gravelly old man who watches over the house for his more successful brother. He never actually says anything racist or mean, until Mina attacks him when they move-in. The guy is joking around, and yes his humor is not their taste—but due to Mina implanting her own implied prejudices on the man on their car ride to the house, they all interpret his humor as abrasive. Mina introduces herself by implying the man is too shabby to be the owner of the house. When the man responds with a sharp wit and sarcasm, Mina immediately goes into low-self esteem attack mode and stokes the fires leading to the poor guy getting killed. If you rewatch the movie, knowing what happens (which I did), Mina’s instigation sticks out like a sore thumb.
Mina is the female version of Charlie. She has to always be right. She’s the genius, everyone else is beneath her, and if anyone says a cross word or one ups her—they are a racist. This is the initial conflict which planted the malicious seed in the group that allowed and/or activated the killer.
As we learn in the ending credits, the killer doesn’t always kill the folks that move into a property he’s seeded. We don’t know his entire M.O, but it appears he has a type. He waits for the victims that match his taste, and he uses their own vices to distract them from their pending doom.
Much like other ambiguous slasher villains like The Collector and Billy (Black Christmas) we never see the killer’s real face. We never hear his voice, but we know he’s still there.
This is why I think this movie should have been linked to the Poughkeepsie Tapes. If you haven’t seen the film, which I do not recommend, it’s a brutal found footage film about a torturous, voyeur who invades the lives of his victims. In the end, he escapes with the authorities being none the wiser and his final message is similar to that of the Zodiac Killer, in that he states he will continue to kill, they’ll just never know it was him.
The way this killer worked, his technological savvy, along with his planning and preparation would fit the Poughkeepsie Killer perfectly.
But the most important Spoiler of all is: THE DOG LIVES!
