‘Inheritance’: Review

Dir: Neil Burger. US. 2024. 101mins

Following the demise of her mom, directionless twentysomething New Yorker Maya (Phoebe Dynevor) reconnects along with her estranged father Sam (Rhys Ifans), accepting his invitation to affix his actual property enterprise headquartered in Egypt. Quickly, a discovery that Sam isn’t all he seems to be kickstarts a worldwide journey that additionally takes Maya to India and South Korea — a journey that’s totally shot on an iPhone 13, with minimal crew. This guerrilla method, along with Dynevor’s dedicated efficiency, give Inheritance an adrenaline-fuelled agility that lifts it above the conventional trappings of the style.

Gritty immediacy

Directed by Neil Burger (Limitless, Divergent and The Upside), Inheritance releases in US cinemas on January 24 via IFC Movies, and will show efficient counter-programming in a discipline of awards options. The presence of Dynevor within the solid must also assist; the British actress has legions of followers from her time heading Netflix hit Bridgerton, and likewise impressed in 2023 thriller Honest Play. 

Right here, Dynevor places in a stable efficiency as a younger girl who finds herself minimize off from the world after months of caring for her terminally in poor health mom. It’s simple to see why Maya could be tempted to place her belief in her father, regardless of the warnings of her older sister. When Sam is kidnapped, Maya should observe directions to retrieve the highly-prized merchandise that can safe his launch, shaking off the police and different shadowy figures on her tail, and discovering a braveness and power that she didn’t realise she possessed.

The screenplay, written by Burger and Olen Stienhaur, creator of TV thriller Berlin Station, follows acquainted narrative beats: nameless voices on the telephone, hidden secure deposit bins, goons ceaselessly in pursuit. However the truth that this shiny actioner is shot on an iPhone (largely underneath the radar in 2022) offers it an important level of distinction. Burger — who conceived the undertaking throughout the Covid-19 lockdowns — DoP Jackson Hunt and a skeleton crew reportedly roamed the globe, filming in the course of actual crowds in Cairo’s Khan Il Khalil market, amongst precise passengers on planes and trains and, with the digital camera hid, at airport customs desks. (The filmmakers used quite a lot of tips, together with digital masking, to keep away from authorized points.) 

Whereas the movie is clearly tightly scripted and there was clearly cautious planning concerned — and certain quite a lot of work completed in post-production, significantly by editor Nick Carew who retains issues shifting at an absolute clip — this ad-hoc method does translate nicely on display screen, imbuing the movie with a gritty immediacy. Central to that’s Dynevor who seems in virtually each scene. Maya’s metamorphosis from misplaced daughter to motion hero is, whereas largely predictable, very watchable. And whereas Rhys Ifans has far much less display screen time because the shadowy Sam, he clearly relishes the duplicitous nature of his function — and channels one thing of Trump in each accent and efficiency. 

The true stars of the present are, nevertheless, the motion sequences. Whereas they had been all little question meticulously choreographed, the immersive nature of the filming offers them an edge-of-the-seat really feel; not least a motorbike chase via the streets of Delhi, white-knuckle stuff regardless of the gridlocked site visitors. And even in moments of relative narrative stillness, Burger and Hunt successfully use their environment — the hushed formality of an airport, a teaming market, a large Seoul road — to underpin the strain of their story. That’s additionally helped by a wired, propulsive digital rating by Paul Leonard-Morgan, which acts because the movie’s heartbeat.