Bullet Points: The Owners (2020)
Every once in a while I find the need to review a movie fresh out of the machine. One that somehow slipped past the likes of my colleagues without review but also one that appears to have some action merit. The Owners certainly feels like your standard “trapped in the wrong house” kind of horror movie, but the poster and description led me to believe there would be a little more action than usual. Read on to see if I was deceived or not….
Synopsis: When a group of friends break into an empty house, the elderly couple that lives there comes home early and the would-be-thieves suddenly must fight to save themselves.
- Please leave so I can rage: The film opens with a group of three nitwits waiting in a car outside of a hillside mansion for the occupants to leave. They clearly don’t have good intentions. The James Corden looking fellow (Terry) played by Andrew Ellis has a mother who cleans the place and the three men have planned to go in and steal it blind while the folks are gone. What a stellar plan, eh? Things immediately start going astray when Nathan’s (Ian Kenny) girlfriend (Maisie Williams) shows up to get her car back
- Stop smashing my stuff, bro: It could have been a nice and peaceful little loot job but the crazy looking Gaz (Jake Curran) starts smashing shit left and right. All of the smashing comes to an end, though, when they discover the hidden safe in the basement of the house. Terry’s first blunder would follow as he said it was a digital safe when it clearly wasn’t. So much for Gaz’s little digital safe-cracking device…. You can already see the cracks forming in their relationship as Gaz starts taking command of everything and Nathan and he nearly come to blows.
- Old folks: They decide to wait for the elderly couple to come home so they can get the combination from them. It also happens that Nathan’s girlfriend Mary joins lthemainside the house but she’s definitely not down with all of the criminal activity. She tries to be the voice of reason for both Gaz and the now desperate Nathan. It does seem that no matter what she says or does the lady, Mrs. Huggins, is not a fan of her.
- A gift for the gab: Dr. and Mrs. Huggins are now working in almost full cooperation with the crooks. They are willing to part with anything for their safety but Dr. Huggins still isn’t willing to give up the combination of the safe. Even when they put a box cutter to the finger of Mrs. Huggins. Finally, after talking pretty much everyone in the room out of doing what they were planning (except for crazy Gaz) Dr. Huggins makes a play that creates an opening for Nathan to try and stop Gaz.
- Don’t breathe: Eventually the fleeing and surviving members of the criminal crew find themselves in a fight for their lives against the Huggins duo. The house isn’t what it seemed to be and now Mary and Terry are up against the brilliant doctor and his crazy ass wife. They unleash smoke throughout the mansion and mentally menace Terry to the point of turning him into a little child. It’s basically Mary against the world! That is probably the moments where The Owners feels like it hits its stride. Maisie Williams is good as the unappreciated girlfriend of Nathan who has to fight for their lives as the boys are all utterly useless. Dr. and Mrs. Huggins end up being very creepy even though we’re not yet sure how fare they are willing to go.
- Damn you Terry: While Andrew Ellis is good as Terry, his character is a walking (and sometimes crawling) joke. He was once in a relationship with Mary’s twin sister Jane so he’s totally in love with her and he has that scaredy-cat complex where he freezes when he should be acting. If it wasn’t for Mary he probably wouldn’t even be alive. Even with his physical and emotional weaknesses, it’s his mental weakness that allows the good doctor to turn Terry on his precious Mary and help the Huggins in their sinister plan. And one last time, we get to say “Damn you Terry!”
- Deep shit: There are a couple of points throughout the film where you can really tell that the characters are knee-deep in shit. Young Mary is really the only one who seems to understand it and also the only one trying to find a way out of it. The Huggins aren’t exactly the type of folk you want to visit during the holiday. They just might not let you leave. The film does fall into some of the same tropes we’ve seen in similar films and the performances of the actors is really what makes this movie enjoyable over its unoriginal plot.
The Verdict: It would be easy to say that The Owners doesn’t do anything super original in its story telling and that the scares are kept to a minimum. I could say that Maisie Williams and the rest of the cast are fine in their roles but that the Sylvester McCoy and Rita Tushingham are what really set the film apart. I’m sure you’ve seen it all before. The story that has been told in horror at least a couple of times per decade and one that never really delivers that punch. It’s mid-pack, no doubt but the solid performances and clean directing do make up for a lackluster story and a very sad amount of destruction. I say it would be easy to say these things because they’re obviously true in this case and I’ve already typed it all out. So I guess that’s that….watch it if you’re big into movies like Don’t Breathe or The People Under the Stairs but I still think that both of those movies are superior to The Owners.
