WINDFALL (NETFLIX) (2022)

SYNOPSIS: A Hitchcockian thriller following a young couple (Lily Collins, Jesse Plemons) who arrive at their vacation home only to find it’s being robbed. 

MOVIE REVIEW:

What can you do if you are stuck at home during a pandemic?

How about gathering a group of good friends over Zoom and start pitching an idea for a movie liked what Jason Segel did.

In this touted as a Hitchcockian, film-noir inspired thriller, Segel plays a stranger who wonders around a nice vacation home drinking orange juice and urinates in the shower. When he is about leave with a Rolex and some money he found, a tech billionaire (Jesse Plemons) and his wife (Lily Collins) walks in and is immediately taken as hostages by the stranger.

Realizing he might be captured on security cameras; the stranger demands a bigger sum of money from the billionaire but his assistant can only deliver the cash the day after. Thus, the threesome is forced to spend the night together and obviously it’s not going to end well in the end.

This home invasion thriller which takes place in a single location is clearly more talky than thrilling. There are no panic rooms, hidden compartments or even accomplices who barge in halfway. For the majority of the runtime, there’s just Segel, Plemons and Collins walking around the estate and sitting around lamenting about life, corporate greed, egos and commentary about social status.

Plemons is solid as the narcissistic tech billionaire. His character is the slimy rich a-hole who attempts to talk himself out of every situation looking down on everyone and that includes his trophy wife. Segel playing against type offers a somewhat engaging performance, ditto to Collins. In other words, it’s generally well-acted except there’s little tension and character development to keep viewers invested throughout.

Truthfully, Windfall actually does turned out to be a worthy trip given the surprise turn out of events in the last act. It’s a pleasure to say despite the less-than-stellar narrative, the experience is very much out-of-the-box.

MOVIE RATING:

Review by Linus Tee