Villains (2019).
Read from the back of the box…
Dan Berk and Bobby Olsen wrote and directed this film that falls into the “bad people meet worse people” subgenre.
The film opens with Mickey and Jules, two fairly inoffensive lowlifes, robbing a convenience store. They don’t hurt anyone, don’t really cause much damage outside of tossing a chip rack to the ground, and get away scott free. It seems the love birds ultimate goal is to get to Florida, and somehow this small score was the last remaining key to that dream. But there’s one big problem…they didn’t get gas, and the car comes to a rolling stop in the middle of the woods. Luckily for them, there’s a house close by with a car in the garage, so the plan becomes simple - break into the home, snag the keys, and drive to the Sunshine State.
As the pair searches for the keys, we see that the home is fairly boring and severely outdated, there’s certainly nothing worth stealing. Hell, you’d probably need two people to abscond with the 1980’s tube TV sitting in the corner. They do, however, find something interesting in the basement…a little girl, chained to a radiator. And then the owners come home. George and Gloria, an older couple that you’d never look twice at brushing past them at the grocery store. What transpires is a game of cat and mouse as Mickey and Jules try to get out of the house and George and Gloria try to figure out what to do with their uninvited guests.
The small cast is really fantastic. Bill Skarsgaard and Maika Munroe have incredible chemistry together, easily sliding into the same category as Bonnie and Clyde, Clarence and Alabama, and Mickey and Mallory, who were clearly an influence on this couple. The Tarantino influence is literally worn on Mickey’s sleeve, as there’s a tattoo of Stuntman Mike, and I’m sure that the name Jules wasn’t coincidental. Skarsgaard bounces around with a distinctive gait, bringing a subdued level of physical comedy to the role. Maika Munroe continues to move her way up my top final girls list and this role only helps bolster my unending crush on her that started back with 2016’s It Follows. Amazing character actors Jeffrey Donovan (Burn Notice) and Kyra Sedgewick (The Closer) are sufficiently sweet and creepy as the mysterious homeowners. Everyone in the cast gets their time to shine, whether it’s George dressing the couple down while on the couch using his traveling sales experience or Gloria seducing Mickey donned in full burlesque.
Villains is a breezy, enjoyable dark comedy, but there’s one real thing that holds it back and that’s that the film didn’t go far enough. The setup is a great start to gripping possibilities, but ultimately it plays things pretty safely versus letting things go off the rails completely. There’s a moment in the film centering around a tongue piercing and I thought to myself, “Okay, this is where things are going to take a turn!”, but the moment never really escalated like it could (or should) have. Gloria has some serious mental issues that aren’t really explored past a fleeting explanation regarding fertility and the girl who’s chained up seems like less of a mystery than the film wants you to believe.
When Villains wraps up, there are two characters that are physically unscathed, and in my opinion that was a real opportunity. With the cast and setting, this had the potential to become a bonafide cult classic, but instead feels relegated to a film that I’ll probably forget I saw in a few years while browsing on Netflix.
The Blu-ray was released by Gunpowder and Sky and looks beautiful, not a surprise considering it’s from just a few years ago. There are two different commentaries by the directors, one that was recorded in 2019 and another that was recorded specifically for this release in 2022. I do wish that there was a different perspective on one of the tracks, maybe with some of the actors or other crew members, because listening to the 2022 one, there aren’t many big revelations and there’s some dead air at times. The guys don’t sound super excited to be there. There are also a series of quick interviews with the actors, typical press kit type of stuff - “What did you like about the script, how did you like working with this actor”, etc. Nothing mind blowing but it’s always fun to look at Bill Skarsgaard and Maika Munroe. There’s a video essay on criminal couples in film featuring past Force Five guest Samm Deighan, a timelapse video for Jeffrey Donovan’s makeup application for a scene in the climax of the film, and finally a few deleted scenes with optional commentary from the directors.
So that’s Villains. Have you heard of it? Have you seen it? If you have, what did you think? Let me know in the comments and let’s talk movies. Thanks again for supporting, and I’ll talk to you soon.
