Villains’ description reminded me of The Perfect Host, a movie that I enjoyed more than most viewers and critics. I seriously considered seeing it in theaters, but ultimately did not because it was playing disproportionately further away than my interest. It is about a couple that invade an isolated home after they hit a speedbump in their plan to an idyllic future in Florida then get ensnared in the occupants’ drama when they come home. The couples act as foils for each other, and as the movie unfolds, you are supposed to wonder who will get the upper hand.
I was also interested in Villains because Maika Monroe is in the cast, and I am rooting for her. I adored her in The Guest and It Follows. She was good in The 5th Wave and Greta, which were not great movies, but she does not act as if they were less than award winning. Her most respectable credit, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House, is the one that she is not really memorable in, and I was not a fan of Bokeh,a little indie, existential sci-fi film. So I missed it, but considering the trajectory of her career, which does not feel related to her talent, it did not feel like urgent viewing material.
Do you want the good news or the bad news? Villains is visually distinctive. There are three styles depicted in the film. The main couple’s fantasy of the future is depicted as an amateur home movie—a little hazy, feels more reminiscent of the past than the present. The audio does not match the footage, but corresponds with the present-we are seeing their motivation and hearing them create their shared world so it is as real to us as it is to them. We see this fantasy before we meet them to lessen the blow of their absurd reality. If Monroe and Bill Skarsgard, who played Pennywise in the most recent film version of It, did not play them, they would not make a favorable impression. The present is generally shot in a traditional style except when they decide to improvise and share a private moment together as if she is Rapunzel, and we see their point of view—they are the only ones in the world, and they are doing their best to isolate themselves from anything that distracts them from the peace that they find in each other. It is beautiful.
I generally enjoy films in which someone believes that he or she has the upper hand then the tables get turned so Villains’ story could have worked. The couples can either be compared and contrasted and seen as completely different: ages, style, moral code, etc., or they could be seen as a before and after picture. If the main couple keep living just for each other and stop interacting with the world in a real way, then they are in danger of becoming the older couple, who are completely gonzo. I did not expect the plot twist regarding the couples’ central conflict although in retrospect, when the main couple are looking around the house and stumble upon a home video camera, it is obvious.
Villains has a great cast. Besides Monroe and Skarsgard, Kyra Sedgwick is generally amazing. She is the best part of Big Sky, memorable in Hearts and Souls and The Woodsman and has been consistenly squirreling away distinguished performances. Though I am not as familiar with Jeffrey Donovan, I have always considered his work to be stellar. He makes an excellent bad guy. I remember him from a NBC television series called The Pretender, but he has been in other movies that I have seen in which he disappeared, and I totally do not remember him.
So if the story has good bones, the cast is stellar and the visual style is unique, then what is the bad news? The actual execution is just mind-numbing. I was completely not invested and emotionally checked out fairly early in the proceeding. It felt like a psycho kooky off instead of having a point at the end of the resolution and feeling emotionally resonant. Why did Donovan’s character have to have a Southern accent? The movie is actually preaching to the choir, but even I think that it is lazy to make a Southern accent signal strangeness. What did Skarsgard’s character see in the photo album that made him react so strangely? It just felt aberrant for aberration sake, played to be extreme without being rooted in reality? Also it was so strange that the movie kept putting Skarsgard in a situation where regardless of whether or not he was interested, he would turn down a woman’s advances. What was the point of all of this?
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So the big secret is that the older couple has a child locked up in the basement, and presumably because she is not biologically related, she no longer interests them, and they want to try and get another one. This child becomes a kind of Rorschach test for the core values of the couples. The main couple decide to rescue her and keep her primarily at the urging of Monroe’s character because of her character’s earlier trauma. It appears that the women have these textured, haunted pasts, but they are so underdeveloped (though Monroe really sells it) that I fail to see how it resonates with their present other than the failure to get early nurturing makes them vulnerable to bad relationships which centralize their desires. In the end, the men end up dead, the women alone, but Monroe gets to live her fantasy, but with the kid, not her boyfriend as intended. Because the end is shot using the fantasy sequence style, I have my doubts whether it is the true ending. The main couple can’t successfully rob and getaway from a gas station without running out of gas so I have my doubts regarding Monroe’s ability to successfully raise a healed child. So the women are alone and must face themselves, but the kid prevents such a bleak ending, which feels cheap. Also what is the point of parallel couples if the guys don’t get a past so their shared ending is fitting.
If Villains was trying to convey a message to me, it did not succeed. It felt more like an acting exercise than a convincing character study. I do not blame the actors, but the team behind the camera that did not do enough to flesh out the story and make more emotionally rich parallels than this caricature of deviants that this film has to offer. This film is a disappointment and a waste of time. It also ultimately breaks my cardinal rule of making an unlikeable woman likeable by giving her a child to protect. Everyone, the viewers and the actors, deserved better. Skip it!