The Rental
Starring: Dan Stevens, Alison Brie, Sheila Vand, Jeremy Allen White, Toby Huss
Director: Dave Franco
Coworkers Charlie (Dan Stevens) and Mina (Sheila Vand), decide they should celebrate some work accomplishments and rent a beautiful yet pricey oceanside house for a weekend. Joining them for the fun are Charlie's wife Michelle (Alison Brie) and his brother/Mina's boyfriend Josh (Jeremy Allen White). After meeting their potentially racist host Taylor (Toby Huss), the gang is left to party and do drugs. Things aren't what they seem and after Charlie and Mina have a drug induced hook up, they discover cameras hidden around the house. At first it appears Taylor is spying on them but the truth turns out to hold much deadlier consequences.
The indie horror genre has not only been a great place for aficionados to find some hidden gems but also has become a place, especially recently, where actors have chosen to make their directorial debut (Jordan Peele with Get Out & Joel Edgerton with The Gift). We can add actor Dave Franco to this list, but unfortunately this debut leaves a lot to be desired.
I don't mind slow burn thrillers and the set up here is actually very well done. I was intrigued to see what was going to happen next as various plot threads appear to be being set up. And then the film seems to lose interest in being a horror thriller and dives into predictable plot convolutions and relationship drama where all the characters become hard to care about. When the slasher elements do eventually creep into the story, I didn't care about who lived.
To its credit, the film looks great with some appropriately foggy cinematography. Franco even films the horror elements well, which makes it even more frustrating how long and tedious it was to get to that point. And while the ending is left ambiguous, I'm actually ok with that. It might add some rewatch value to see if there are any clues that were left for us to figure out. It's unfortunate the journey to this ending is so tedious and dull.
I was pretty disappointed by this. I do look forward to what Franco does next as a director though.
Grade: C-
The Rental is available on VOD