A bit of a throwback to the kind of noir-tinged black-comedy-dramas of yore where good people break very bad, this quietly ruthless film sticks to the template but throws in some new-fangled touches. It also draws on the talents of a cracking roster of supporting players, who add a substantial amount of texture and colour to the proceedings, not least among them the film’s own director Alex Winter, best known for playing Bill opposite Keanu Reeves’ Ted. In a peripheral but significant role, Winter plays a sad-sack stoner, the kind of tragic loser Bill might have grown up to be if he and Ted had never encountered George Carlin and his most excellent time machine.
That said, something feels a bit undercooked here, perhaps due to Winter’s direction or Michael MB Galvin’s script, which seems to lack a little torque in the last turns of the screw. The set-up is simple enough, a quite relatable for anyone who has an ageing parent and shiftless siblings. Meg (Kaya Scodelario) has outsourced the care of her widowed mother Judy (Ingunn Omholt) to home-help Grace (Billie Lourd, gloriously trashy) while Meg raises her kids and tries to get her business selling stuff on Facebook up and running. When Judy has a stroke, Meg’s wannabe screenwriter brother Noah (Josh Gad) arrives in town and the two siblings must prepare for their parent’s death and the division of assets.
But while sifting through the junk in Judy’s basement, Meg and Noah discover a corpse, seemingly dead for many years, walled up down there. They suspect that the dead person might be a neighbour who went missing; this throws up new problems, including how to deal with a blackmail attempt from Grace. Further complicating the estate-planning, crime-covering maths is the needy variable that is cousin Bodie (Anthony Carrigan, best known for playing NoHo Hank on TV show Barry), who just wants to be part of his cousins’ lives again. Carrigan, as he was in Barry, is a serial scene stealer and you can’t stop watching his distinctive charming-repulsive shtick.
On the down side, the noir-necessity that dictates that Meg and Noah sink to new depths to protect themselves doesn’t quite feel set up sufficiently and ultimately their characters are both somewhat cipher-like, less well drawn than even Judy who hardly has more than five words in the whole film. But the package has a nasty little swagger that makes it a nice counterpoint to all the holiday cheer coming our way.
• Adulthood is on digital platforms from 17 November.
