Becky (2020) Director: Jonathan Milott & Cary Murnion Starring: Lulu Wilson, Kevin James, Joel McHale, Robert Maillet, Amanda Brugel
Certificate: 18 Running Time: 100 Minutes
Tagline: "There once was a little girl..."
New film releases have been somewhat thin on the ground this year for obvious reasons, so you would think any that do somehow make it out would be heralded far and wide. However, this one came out a few weeks ago (according to Wikipedia at least) and I haven't heard a single peep about it! Oh well, luckily I happened upon it anyway, and I quickly found a premise that appealed to me. It stars Joel McHale and Lulu Wilson as Jeff and Becky, a father and daughter attempting to reconnect after the death about one year earlier of their wife/mother, although this desire seems to be more Jeff's than Becky's who is upset, angry and still grieving. Jeff takes Becky to the family's lakeside cabin where he has also invited Kayla (Brugel), his new girlfriend, and her young son, for he has apparently decided a good way to reconnect with his daughter and help her get over her mother's death is to tell her he's planning to marry Kayla. This goes down about as well as you might expect and Becky legs it into the woodland surrounding the cabin.
Becky is placated by her idiotic father...
Soon after his happens, a group of four Neo-Nazi convicts show up, having freshly busted out of the big house, who are looking to retrieve something they apparently stashed in the cabin some time before. In other words, everyone but Becky quickly becomes a hostage, and it's up to the angry 13-year old to save the day. This might not sound enormously plausible, I agree, but it only takes one look at the rather graphic poster/cover as well as the tagline to realise that, plausible or not, that's what we're in store for here, and it's up to young Lulu Wilson to pull it off. She had caught my eye previously though, making good use of her screentime in one episode of Star Trek Picard, and I believe she's already fairly well known in horror film circles, so I was confident she had enough skill to make it at least semi-believable.
Dominick investigates a noise...
She has a formidable-looking foe, too, in the form of the menacing, swastika-tattooed Dominick (played by an almost unrecognisable Kevin James), and his cronies (including ex-WWE wrestler, Kurrgan) who understandably underestimate the elusive teen. The result of this is as predictable as you might think, especially when considering the aforementioned spoilers, but you still might be a little surprised by the manner in which Becky attends to the heinous oafs. It's actually quite a graphic movie at times, with several scenes featuring gore levels more reminiscent of a full-on horror film. Becky seems perfectly at ease amidst it all though, however concerning that might be, and the young actress portraying her does an excellent job. Sufficiently so, in fact, that she is the main reason to watch what would otherwise probably be a thoroughly average thriller. I even hope there's a sequel!
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