Becky

“Becky is as strong-willed and vindictive as they come.” Perhaps not a recommendation in the traditional sense, particularly from a prospective step-parent when speaking about her fiancé’s thirteen-year-old daughter, but as a warning from a hostage to the escaped convict white supremacists who are holding her, Kayla’s words are at least painfully honest.

It’s been a difficult year for Becky Hooper since the death of her mother, and a weekend away at Lake Sinclair with her father Jeff was not what she wanted even before Kayla and her son showed up unannounced – and then she found out that Kayla and her dad were engaged. A pint-sized bottle of directionless rage, she ran into the woods to be alone with her dogs Dora and Diego.

Then came the next unexpected visitors to the lake house, Dominick, Apex, Cole and Hammond, having killed the guards escorting their transfer during their escape and now armed and seeking a key hidden in the basement of the summer home where a peaceful retreat from the troubles of the world are no longer likely for Jeff, for Hell hath no fury like a teenage girl who just found a focus for her anger.

Directed by Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion from a screenplay by Nick Morris, Lane Skye and Ruckus Skye, Becky plays like Home Alone screened after the watershed with Star Trek Picard’s Lulu Wilson the schoolgirl sideswiped by the overwhelming unfairness of life who stares unblinking into the face of four tattooed Neo-Nazis twice her size led by former mall cop Kevin James as Dominick, his righteousness a cover for his empty soul.

With The X-Files‘ Joel McHale as Jeff and Deadpool 2‘s towering Robert Maillet as Apex, Dominick’s right-hand man and muscle whose empathy towards the hostages is a threat to their goal, Becky quickly learns to be as determined and ruthless as the hardened criminals, her home-made weaponry inventive, efficient and entertaining.

The opening scenes paralleling the playground and the prison ground, neither safe places for the weak and dependent on a herd mentality, with too few staff in either to enforce order if those who make up the bulk of the population choose not to obey, what presents itself as a genuinely tense home invasion film swiftly metamorphoses into a bloody and sometimes hilarious game of mouse and cat.

Becky is released across digital platforms on 28th September by Vertigo

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